Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
Announcer - 00:00:03:
Welcome to Revolutionary Optimism. Living at this time in history, we are challenged with the convergence of crises that is affecting our daily lives. Issues like economic hardship, a teetering democracy, and the worsening climate emergency have left many Americans feeling more despair than ever. To respond to the challenging times we're living through, physician, humanitarian, and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified Revolutionary Optimism as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Once you commit yourself as a revolutionary optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, hashtag unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace. On this podcast, Dr. Zeitz is working to provide you with perspectives from leaders fighting for equity, justice, and peace on their strategies, insights, and tools for overcoming adversity and driving forward revolutionary transformation with unbridled optimism and real-world pragmatism. In this episode, Dr. Zeitz is talking with Nick Coccoma. Nick is a political thought leader with a diverse interdisciplinary expertise spanning theology, philosophy, history, and democratic innovation. Over the past seven years, he has focused on democratic innovation, and he champions citizens' assemblies as a pivotal keystone change that is needed for reconstructing our U.S. Democracy. Through his writing, teaching, and activism, he's a thought leader in the deliberative democracy field. Nick collaborates with nonprofits, advocacy groups, and civic organizations to advance a bold vision for 21st century democracy by sparking public imagination around new possibilities for self-government to build momentum for transformative change. Here's your host, Dr. Paul Zeitz.
Paul - 00:01:48:
Hey, Nick, thank you so much. It's so great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today?
Nick - 00:01:53:
Doing well Paul, thanks for having me here it's a pleasure to be here talking to you.
Paul - 00:01:57:
Okay, great. So this is my first podcast after the 2024 presidential election. So we do want to get into that. But I also wanted to let my audience know that Nick and I have been working together for the last four months on democratic innovation, which we're going to dig into today. And it's been a great honor to learn from you. And I really feel like you're a mentor and a shepherd of me as I really am digging in on the opportunities that we're going to discuss now. So it's like a bit of the under the hood, if you will, for what's up with Unify USA. Everyone, this is Nick. So Nick, I wanted to start with asking you a little bit about your personal journey, which led you to become involved with this movement of reforming democracy in America.
Nick - 00:02:42:
Absolutely. Sure. Well, my journey is interesting and a bit circuitous. So it all begins in a little town that's got a big reputation. Some of your audience may know of my hometown, Cooperstown, New York, famous for the site of the Baseball Hall of Fame. And so every year, hundreds of thousands of baseball fans make the pilgrimage to this tiny village in upstate New York of under 2,000 people. And, um, And that's where I was born and grew up. And it was quite a lovely place to. To spend one's childhood, to grow up in, you know, that cliche, it takes a village. What was really true in my case, I felt like I was really raised by... By this small town. And, That was true in many ways. I was born into a legal family. My parents are both attorneys, and my father is actually a New York State judge. I spent many years on the bench as a trial judge and eventually administrative. Judge in the state court system. And, uh, And so being in a legal family, I'm sure like, you know, in your family, family of doctors, you know, medical discussions are probably, you know, frequented at the dinner table. At our dinner table growing up, it was always conversations around. Current events, politics, you know, what was going on in the law, what was happening in the courts. And so I was, from a young age, hearing about what my parents' profession was. And, you know, they were part of a town where... It was really a democratic way of life in the town. There was one institution. Really in the town for every sector of society. There was one hospital. There was one public school. There was one gym. There was You know, it was a main street USA, these little mom and pop stores. There was... You know, uh, uh, Just one, you know, a couple of pharmacies. So these main institutions, because there was just one of them, The folks that live in the town had to all come together to make these institutions work. You know, they had to all come together. And There wasn't a lot of political division or polarization. My folks were kind of Republicans, traditional Republicans. But our best friends were Democrats. And it didn't matter too much your party affiliation because everyone had to basically make these. The same institutions work that make this common life together in this small town. And And I think that had a very democratizing effect on people because there was just one of everything. Everyone was thrown together. You know, there was a few rich people, a few poor folks in the town. Most of us were somewhere in the... You know, the middle. And And because You know, there was one of everything. Everyone's kids were in the schools together. Everyone was at the same hospital. And so I had a way of, of making democracy, again, this kind of, this practice of building a common life together. And I. So I start with that... You know, bit of background. Because it relates so much to what I'm doing now. Uh, uh, like, the cause of citizens' assemblies. And I think that's the deep root. And along with that, my father's work as a judge exposed me at a young age to the jury system in America and the trial system. So I often would go to court to see him. First, he was first a prosecutor, so... I remember going to see him. Trial cases, and then as a judge, we'd go watch. And it was always fascinating to go see these trials take place. And it's kind of like a public theater, really. And you see this very core democratic process at work. And when I was 10, he ran for judge in our county. In New York, he run for office. And so the tender age of 10, I was going with him canvassing, door knocking. Carrying signs and these parades. We wanted all these... Parades around the county, church suppers and chicken dinners. And, you know, it was kind of fun as a kid. It was like, this is... This is cool. You know, democracy is kind of got this ritual to it. And on election day, everyone would go vote. And then you go down to have a pancake dinner, breakfast rather, at the VFW Hall. And so there was sort of this ritual festival quality to it that I remember as... As a young boy. And so I've held onto those memories of of what a common life, a democratic life can feel like. And that has carried me to today. So, you know, how I got from there to here is a bit of a journey. But in sum, I came to Massachusetts for college and graduate school. I studied the humanities. I have a degree in theater and was an actor in college. And then I went on to study theology and philosophy in graduate school. And I've done work as a teacher, as a campus minister, lay minister, mostly in school settings. And then also I've had a career as a writer, a freelance writer. I've written about cultural issues, a lot of film criticism, actually, and then also religion, and more recently, especially the last few years, politics. And, um, And so that's sort of my deep background. And how I got to this. Moment and it all took this turn. In 2016, really, after the presidential election that year. When I suddenly saw... The country sort of heading in a direction that seemed to be, based on my background and my upbringing, kind of crossing into terrain I always thought we would. It was sort of a no-go zone, really questioning democratic procedures and norms and ethics. And that was really alarming. And so I want to find a way to try to help. And, that propelled me into looking into different reform, democracy reform groups. Efforts like ranked choice voting. Anti-gerrymandering work, all these things. And it was funny because as I would go through each of these... Campaigns and these reforms, I would think, you know, yeah, that would be helpful. That would make matters better. But, you know, it wouldn't really take care of this problem. It wouldn't take care of the... You know, dark money, the corruption of money. Or if you took care of that, it wouldn't take care of, you know. This other part and It was like... You know, trying to plug all these leaks one by one. Didn't seem very effective and Then a random thing happened. I was somewhere in my internet searching. I came across the TED Talk by a man named Brett Hennig. And Brett is an Australian who lives in Europe now and he gave a TED Talk around this time. Talking about this phenomenon called democracy by lottery. Or sortition, which is the technical name, the use of lots to pick people. To serve in government. And he was proposing this idea of citizens assemblies replacing our elections. Basically, a system where everyday people from all walks of life are picked by lot to fill our legislatures and make decisions together. And as I went on and gave this talk, my mind was just blown. It was sort of my epiphany. My eureka moment, because I realized, wow, yes, this is... The thing that would really get to the root of so many of our problems with our politics. And that really converted me. Pretty quickly to the cause of democracy by lottery and citizens' assemblies, also called deliberative democracy. And so the last... Of years, that's the field and the space I've been working in is on that cause.
Paul - 00:10:48:
Yeah, thank you for that deep history from your childhood through your educational journey. I didn't think I knew you were an actor, so I have to keep that in mind. I hope you're not performing when you're with me. But you have that gift, so I have to be aware of that.
Nick - 00:11:05:
It's a method performance.
Paul - 00:11:07:
It's a method. Yeah, exactly. So, and fascinating that your inquiry into healing or reconstructing our democracy led you into sortition-based democracy. I wanted to ask you, there's been a lot of talk in this election cycle about the risk of authoritarianism and even fascism in our country. It was actually kind of used by both sides. Certainly, the Democratic side was like calling Trump a threat to fascism, an authoritarian leader, and he was going to bring fascism into our country. And there is still, now that there is a complete MAGA control of our country, government following the 2024 election, that fear really exists. And then paradoxically, Trump also said that the liberal Democrats were also a threat to democracy and that they were, you know, using the Justice Department to weaponize, to attack political opponents. And he was also using those arguments. So I would love to ask you to explain your view on how a sortition-based democracy can create safeguards against fascism, actually, historically and in this moment of our U.S. History.
Nick - 00:12:31:
Sure. Well, the history of sortition democracy goes back to the most famous democracy in Western civilization, ancient Athens. And I know. You had a previous guest, Terry Berisha, talking a bit about Athens and the deep history of sortition. One of the main reasons The Athenians used sortition as its anti-corruption. Properties and features, the way that it prevented. The political system from being captured by... Wealthy elites. Or those who grasp after power, what we would traditionally call a demagogue, or not even a demagogue, but anyone who has, you know, self extreme self-confidence you know, type A type of personalities. Machiavellian personalities, those who really seek after power. I mean, the psychologist shows that most human beings are pretty decent people and we are pro-social. We want to cooperate and work together. And we're really, we evolved to be that way. But on the margins, there are, as we know, people who are psychologically antisocial. And, they are very adept at getting power. And when you have hierarchies in a society with positions of power over others, those folks who are on the margins. Who score high on narcissism or psychopathy. Machiavellian traits, they are really adept at getting power and wielding it over others in a dangerous way. And so sortition even though it's literally random selection. Which sounds to some of us like, wait, isn't that going to breed chaos? It actually makes things more stable and more pro-social and more calm and cooperative because, by randomly picking from the whole population, you're going to get... The vast majority of people who are... You know, normal psychological profiles to come into opt to. Come together. And then once they're together, They're not operating as part of a party. They're not part of a faction. That's something else that's really poisoning our politics today. You know, George Washington in his farewell address said that, you know, how would... How would a demagogue ever come to power in America? It would be as a result of factionalism, different factions fighting each other. It would get so bad that eventually, the strong man, the demagogue, the tyrant would kind of ride the whirlwind, I think is the phrase he used. And come into the situation and, and. You know, benefit from that factional hatred of each side, the tribalism. And use that to take more power for himself. This is what we see going on in our politics today. And the election system, the party system, partisan politics is what's breeding this is rancor and dissension and mutual self-loathing where, yeah, one side's calling, each side's calling the other fascist or whatever. You know, that's all a result of this tribalism that the party system breeds and encourages. You know, the parties pit us, they divide people into two in, different groups, you have a label and it's like two teams. Red Sox versus Yankees, you know, fighting it out. And you just. You know, I'm a Yankees fan, so I just hate the Red Sox. And it goes like that. With sortition, there's no campaigns, right? There's no parties. There's no factual. Tamps down the factionalism. People are just picked at random and they come together and... They get informed about a topic. And they learn about it from different angles and perspectives from experts. And then they, with the help of trained facilitators, they work together to deliberate and find common ground. So all that, those features are what prevent. Dangerous personalities from getting power, and combined with mandatory and frequent rotation, people cycling in and out of these bodies, it prevents people from becoming corrupted. Entrenched. Yeah, from getting entrenched. And then it tamps down on the factional hatred so that it breeds cooperation. And that all helps prevent the kinds of dangerous, you know, political movements that we see sweeping the country right now.
Paul - 00:17:04:
Yeah. So you touched on something very important about the influence of money and wealthy elites controlling the political system. We had a guest on recently, Ann Pettifor, an international economist who is studying the international financials. She's an expert in the international financial systems. And she also identified the wealthy elites, the oligarchs, as being the source of the problem. They've hijacked. The... Federal Reserve, for example, and they've determined government policy to support their own interests at the expense of the majority of the public. And you also touched on the polarization and The data shows that roughly 70 to 80% of the population agreed to Common Sense Solutions. But the political parties end up polarizing us. So- Like with those, with the oligarchic control of our political system and our financial system. And the resulting polarization, how can your vision of sortition-based democracy make our democracy more resilient to fascist or authoritarian takeover? And like, what is the whirlwind we're in right now? Do we know? You know, what is this moment? Can you help us make sense of this particular moment that we're living through? Because it feels like it could be a whirlwind of fascism, or it could be an opportunity for the masses to come together and say the institutions are broken and the constitution is broken and we need to revamp and create a more authentic democracy. So I need your guidance here.
Nick - 00:18:49:
Well, I should preface with the fact that I'm not an expert in fascism. So, you know, listeners should not necessarily take what I say as... As expertise on this, but it seems that the core... The core of the... Fascist movement and the reason that the country is swinging in this direction, a lot of it has to do with this perception, this loss of trust in our institutions. This perception that that the political and economic institutions are run by elites who are out of touch with everyday Americans. And have created this massive inequality in our country. I think that's. The real root of... Our divisions, you know, our inequality has reached levels that and probably past it now. That we had back in the Gilded Age. The late 19th. Early 20th century. And at that time... When that begins to happen, and then there's a crisis of neoliberal capitalism results. It breeds this inequality. Then there's inevitably some kind of crisis. Both an economic crash and some kind of foreign policy and disaster and then gridlock. You know, and a perception that...
Paul - 00:20:05:
We're a pandemic.
Nick - 00:20:06:
A pandemic, right. And that all happened in... In the early 20th century, we had the Great War, the Great Influenza. We had the collapse, the Great Depression. In our time, we've had Iraq and Afghanistan debacles, those failures. We've had the great financial crash of 2008 and nine, and then the. The pandemic. And then intense gridlock in the system and people's frustration in the sense that this system is, we're not getting the decisions of our government, do not track the desires and the will of the people. And it's creating this massive inequality. When that occurs, That's the breeding ground that's ripe for a fascist movement. There's always a kernel, an undercurrent of fascism in any society at any time on Earth. The question is, how does it take off and get... Get more traction and grow. And it usually occurs in that kind of context of the failure of... Of neoliberal capitalism, which discredits the... Traditional elites, economic, political, and opens people up to much more populist energies. And the interesting thing, though, is that that populist energy can go in either a leftist direction or a right-wing direction. And so we saw that back in the 1930s. There was a fascist movement in this country at that time, but also a strong socialist movement that produced Franklin Roosevelt as president and led to the New Deal, which then... Regulated capitalism, tamed the excesses of capitalism. Redistributed more resources, gave people more economic security. And that security took away the fear of the people. Remember Franklin Roosevelt saying, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The fear put people in a scarcity mentality. And the New Deal took that away and restored a sense of... Of hope and optimism and that we're really equal. In our time, we've kind of failed to take that route. And so now we're seeing the populist energies go. Of in the right wing direction. So how would sortition stop all this?
Paul - 00:22:25:
Because Wait, can you just pause me for one second? Because I think on that point, I just want to say that there was an attempt for a more progressive, if you will, response to this populist crisis, to the sense of economic inequality in the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016.
Nick - 00:22:44:
Right.
Paul - 00:22:45:
Do you agree with that? And he was, the democratic Party kind of ousted him and they went into a more traditional neoliberal philosophy, which is like Wall Street approves their policy. And that is what we've seen since 2016 till now, the last eight years through, you know, through the Biden-Harris administration. So. Was that our missed opportunity? And also maybe this campaign under Biden and Harris or other possible candidates, they could have taken a more liberal populist tact or progressive populist tact and they chose not to. So do I have that right? Or what's your analysis of that?
Nick - 00:23:26:
That's right. From what I've studied, you know, and the person to read on this, the expert on fascism is Robert Paxton, his book Anatomy of Fascism. I would highly recommend to readers. And he was just interviewed recently by the The New York Times talking about the Trump movement, which he identifies as fascist. You know, what he says is looking at historical fascism in the 1920s and 30s. Italy, Germany, other countries. At every step of the way, the... The capitalist elites face a choice. Between the social democratic option or the fascist option. And the countries that succumb to fascism you see over and over again is that every juncture, the traditional elites, the traditional conservatives take the anti-socialist option. They're more afraid of the socialists than they are the fascists, and they believe they can work with the fascists and control them. And they feel less threatened by them than the socialists. And that then leads to an outcome that they didn't really want in the end. So you can say, yeah, that in our country, we had these two big chances. The democratic Party had these two chances in 2016 and 2020 to go with the social democratic. Left-wing economic populist. Movement response of Senator Sanders. And in each... And each Each time the elites in the party you know, beat back that movement. And so now we're reaping the, unfortunately, the... The consequences of that failure, it seems like now there might finally be an awareness, a dawning awareness that you know, in a situation where neoliberal capitalism is... Cause such. Such rage and anger in the Rust Belt and in the countryside, the rural places, that you can't continue to run those kinds of candidates and that platform against fascism. You really have to... Take the social democratic option.
Paul - 00:25:38:
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Thanks for clarifying that. So I want to just move forward a little bit here into like your vision for reconstructing our democracy to address this crisis that we're in. And we did talk to Terry Bouricius about some of the same issues about sortition-based democracy. But you've written some papers over the past few months. And I want to focus on the specific paper that you wrote on transforming our Congress and the idea that we shared with the public on the possibility of a fourth branch of government that would be a Citizens' Assembly. And if you could talk about how this, if you could explain your vision for that and how a structural transformation of how our government operates could benefit us.
Nick - 00:26:35:
Sure, I'll try to be as succinct as I can. So the basic idea behind a Citizens' Assembly, there's three main pillars to it. You have the selection by lottery, a democratic lottery where everyone has equal chance of being selected. And when you do that in a large population with a large enough sample size, you get a a representative sample of the public. You know, you get a body of people that really look, think, and talk and act like everyday Americans from all backgrounds and all walks of life. And they're not bought by big corporate donors and so forth. And so that's the first piece, the lottery selection. The second piece is you bring them together and... They learn about issues from experts and stakeholders and concerned citizens. And they get deep, deep knowledge about a topic. Right now, elections, there's no incentive to get knowledge about anything, right? And a lot of people vote out of ignorance. And this has been proven over and over again. So elections are bad ways of making decisions. So here you're getting people lots of information.
Paul - 00:27:39:
Can I just say, I want to validate that point. I went into the polling booth recently and I had no idea about the school board.
Nick - 00:27:46:
Right.
Paul - 00:27:46:
And I just took the pamphlet from the person there and I just followed what they said. I didn't educate myself. I didn't know what I was voting for. And I just had that personal realization of how ignorant I was on something like that. That really does matter. But I just did what they told me to do, you know?
Nick - 00:28:06:
And that's my design. And I think this is an important point to make to the listeners that our representative democracy, picking representatives through elections, the underlying political theory going into the late 18th century behind that is the idea of consent. You're consenting to other people ruling over you. It's not about our ruling ourselves. It's about when we get an election, in an election, the operative theory of political legitimacy there is that... The election is the means by which we consent to other people being our... Rulers are actually the deep roots of that are medieval, futile medieval practices. In medieval Germany and in the church, actually, of... Of assenting, consenting to a Lord, ruling over us. Submission.
Paul - 00:29:03:
It's easier than taking responsibility ourselves.
Nick - 00:29:06:
It seems easier. And so we're not supposed to think for ourselves. We're going to outsource our power and our self-governing. Agency to others to do it for us. And then they get a mandate to do whatever they want, whether we actually like it or not. And we can say, hey, we don't like what you're doing. Well, too bad. You consented to our ruling you, so now you have to obey us. So, you know, it's all part by design that we. You know, don't know anything when we go into the polling booth, except, you know, maybe the team, the name of the party. And so with sortition, you know, when you get to the assembly, it's... It's about getting deep knowledge so you can really exercise self-government yourself. And the way you do that is through the third piece, which is deliberation. You work with... People to really deliberate. And that's different. That's a specific skill. You know, deliberation is about thinking through the arguments for one position or another. And the only thing that's supposed to compel you is the unforced force of the argument, as they say. That's the only thing that's supposed to matter. Along with certain stories, we're very storytelling people. And that's what you see in jury trials when we deliberate. So the design we have for a new branch of government would be taking this model and trying to scale it up. And you can't do that to a country as large as the United States. So we imagine a multi-body system. Where you have different groups, different bodies of citizens picked by lottery of different sizes and serving for different lengths of time. And these bodies have different functions. So you kind of split up the tasks between the bodies because you don't want one body doing too many things. It gets kind of confused. So the basic design for our legislature is an initial agenda council of some 200 citizens or so. Who do just what that name suggests. They would deliberate and research and look into society, see what problems are out there, and decide what the agenda should be for legislation. Because setting the agenda is the most important and powerful part of any legislative process, what actually gets on the table to discuss. So we have that. And then those agenda items would get sent to a second chamber, which in our design... Is a reformed House of Representatives. This would be a chamber where... In our design, we kept elections for this chamber. So we have some parties that could be elected on basis of platforms, but their actual members would be, to fill their seats, would be picked by lot. So you're not voting for a candidate, you're voting for a party platform. And they would be a national election proportional representation. So the whole country would be one giant district. And if the Social Democrats get 15% of the national vote, they get 15% of the seats in the House. So the second chamber, this House, this reformed House of Representatives would get the agenda items from the agenda council. They would craft policy proposals themselves and try to achieve- It work towards consensus, but try to achieve at least strong majorities for a bill. And then the final phase, these bills would be then sent to a third body, the policy jury. This would be a large group of everyday citizens, again, picked by lottery, that would meet for a short amount of time, maybe a week or so. Few days, and they would conduct a trial of the bill. In other words, the bill would be presented to them, and there would be people there to argue why they should vote yes in favor, and all the reasons why, and there'd be evidence and facts checking and so forth, and then there'd be opponents who could argue. Why they should not approve it. And the jurors could ask questions for clarification, but in the end they would vote by secret ballot without deliberating. And again, this is a large group, maybe 500 or so, which would be enough to capture the... Statistically capture the feelings of all Americans, even 300 million of us, if we were in that room hearing that information. So that's sort of the three stages we have in our paper.
Paul - 00:33:35:
Great. Well, that is unlocking political imagination. My mind is spinning, like imagining how would we go from where we are now with a bicameral legislature into a sortition-based legislature, honoring that there are still electeds and they would have a particular role. Are there any examples from around the world where this is starting to happen? Maybe you could talk about the Belgium example and the city of Paris is two that I know of, but there may be more.
Nick - 00:34:05:
There are a lot of examples. There have been hundreds of citizens assemblies around the world at this point. And you mentioned some of the places where they're now moving from one-time ad hoc assemblies, one single-issue ad hoc assemblies, to more permanent establishment. And so, yes, Belgium has been an innovator in this regard. Are they stablished- One of their provinces, Ostbelgien, the Eastern German-speaking province of Belgium, has now created a permanent citizens assembly, which is that agenda council I mentioned, that produces three items for legislation every legislative session. They send those items to separate, smaller, ad hoc citizens panels, which write the bills and then submit those bills to their elected chamber. So they've now got a hybrid. Elected and sortition system. And then... You have Paris, the city government of Paris has a similar hybrid structure right now, slightly different, but mostly the same idea. And then another country that's been a leader in this regard has been Ireland, the Republic of Ireland. Has been holding a series every couple years, national citizens assemblies. Where the legislature submits items for the national assemblies to address. The assemblies go through their process and then propose changes to laws, even the Constitution itself, and those get then submitted to a national referendum. So they've combined, in that situation, they've combined lottery-based assemblies with national referenda. That sort of direct... Participatory democracy, which is referenda, with deliberative democracy and sortition, which is the assemblies.
Paul - 00:36:00:
Fantastic. Yeah. So it feels like this citizens assembly wave is more advanced in Europe right now. It's percolating here in the United States at the local level and in other parts of the world as well. India, Africa and other parts of Asia and Latin America. So as people are struggling with the rise of authoritarianism around the world, I hope that there is a deliberative wave or a Citizens' Assembly wave that can help reconstruct democracy and make it lift up the voice of the people. So I want to bridge over now and spend the rest of our time about our fourth paper, which was calling for a national citizens or national peoples convention that would focus on constitutional renewal or constitutional reconstruction. I also want to remind or let our listeners know that the 250th anniversary of the United States issuing of the Declaration of Independence will be not that long from now, in about 20 months, in July. 2026, that will be the 250th anniversary. So Nick and I have been in some early discussions about the possibility of a National Citizens Assembly, even in celebration and recognition of that anniversary. But I'd like you to share a little bit more about why you think a extra-constitutional pathway for constitutional renewal might be needed.
Nick - 00:37:30:
Absolutely. Well, you know, the... You and I are both of one mind, as are many Americans, more and more today than ever, that our constitutional framework is hopelessly... Outdated and broken and flawed, and in many ways has... Led to the triumph of Trump and the failure to hold him to account. There's been a lot of A lot of anxiety about Trump's threats to the Constitution, which are very real. He is a threat to the rule of law as a basic idea and checks and balances on power. And the Constitution as a... As a binding force on him. But in other ways... That are uncomfortable for us, he is the product of the Constitution's flaws. Like the monarchical... Pardon power, the monarchical veto power that we afford the president. The control he has over appointments. The despotic Oligarchic Supreme Court, lifetime appointments of nine. Elites? Who who are appointed by others. To rule on every case possible. With almost absolute power. Uh, the- The, uh... Many anti-democratic features of the Constitution that were built into it. And this is, again, very uncomfortable for us. When we go back to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, You see the framers of that document work On the One hand. And happily so, they were really worried about tyranny and they tried to prevent an autocrat from taking power. So that's great. And we want to. We want to listen to that and follow that. They're also, though, against democracy, and that's very uncomfortable, they thought. They should have elite rule. And so... They built a system that's very elite controlled, very oligarchy. They knew about lotteries. They knew about sortition. They knew about Athens and the use.
Paul - 00:39:24:
But wait a second. I've been taught my whole life. I went to the texture Liberty Bell as a small boy. I was told that we have the world's most amazing democracy. But now you're saying that They really weren't. Designing the Constitution to be an authentic democracy is what I guess you're saying.
Nick - 00:39:42:
They weren't, and they were very explicit. If you go into the notes of the Constitutional Convention, almost to a person, the 55... Aristocrats who were part of that that three month process. Uh... Were of one mind that they thought democracy was a terrible form of government, that it would lead to mob. Rule or the tyranny of the majority. And, really, what they were worried about was the loss of property rights and And the threat to the... And their own power and the threat to the creditor class. They convened the convention. In response to the economic populist legislation that was being passed by the state governments at the time. Which were much more democratic. And controlled by everyday people. And Madison and Hamilton saw this as a real threat to the... Financial creditor class that they were part of. Because those... Those states were passing a lot of debtor relief laws. And ability to get out of paying taxes. And that was all they thought of. Hit the elite pocketbook. In a way that would imperil the nation's finances. There were other real problems to the Articles of Confederation, like the inability of the national government to raise taxes. To have a common currency. National defense. It was, there were real problems. And so they did need to fix those. And they did. They provided some good fixes. But along the way, they put in all these anti-democratic features that most Americans at the time didn't really want. And And the question is, well, then why did the Americans ratify this? This thing if it wasn't really you know, if it was more anti-democratic than they really wanted. Well, the answer is because there wasn't much choice. They had... The option of approving the new document, With all of its... The things they didn't like, But it's positive features or sticking with this failing old system of the articles. So, you know, they had to do that. Plus they had to elect representatives to those. Ratifying conventions and so that meant that some elites were also making the decision for the people. And one of the most... Anti-democratic features of that document is Article 5. Which is the amendment procedure. And if listeners look it up, you'll see it's scholars say it's the most difficult, you know, amendment procedure process of any Constitution probably that exists right now. At such a high bar they've set for changing it. So in our last paper, we call for a People's Constitutional Convention. Outside of Article 5, making the case, the political case and the, the constitutional case for an extra-constitutional Constitutional Convention. Basically, we the people have, political sovereignty. We are ultimately the sovereign people. And we can't surrender that or lose that sovereignty to any external law or institution, even if we say that or put it down in a sudden. Provision of law, we retain that ability. And some of the framers even believe this, like James Wilson from the Constitutional Convention. He wrote that the people can change the Constitution any time, in any way they want to. That's a right they have that can never be taken from them, even... If it says that otherwise in the Constitution. And so we call for that approach here. And our historical precedent, ironically, is actually the Convention of 1787, which when you study its history. You see that the calling for that convention by Madison and Hamilton and the content of its debates and the way it was ratified. All of those steps were extra-constitutional. They went beyond what was stipulated in the Articles of Confederation. It And that they just went forward with that. And so that's a model for what we can do today, assuming you can get enough people to support that effort and to give it legitimacy. That does become a legitimate form.
Paul - 00:43:54:
And we're in the 21st century, so we can't just have a set of elites doing it. We have a way of engaging the public. Both through a lottery-based approach, but also we could engage the public through technology to weigh in. We could do deliberative polling. There's other ways that we could engage the public in a process. I just want to ask you, like, why hasn't this happened? And instead of that, maybe, why don't we focus on what could happen in 2024, 2026? Give ourselves a little bit of time to get our act together on this. If you had a magic wand and you could make it all happen, what would you see happen?
Nick - 00:44:35:
Well, in our paper, we come up with a proposal for a people's convention. In which We have three different levels to the process. And And so we imagine first step would be holding 50. District-wide conventions. So 50... Conventions at a district level, and these districts would be... All around the country, and they would be drawn by population. So we would not follow the congressional districts or state boundaries. It would be based on where people live. So you want 50 districts of roughly equal numbers of people within that. And from within those districts, you could randomly select. People to be part of the district assembly. And, and then others could, they would be open to both experts and everyday people to come offer ideas. And the members of. Those conventions would deliberate together and create platforms, different proposals for the overall national Constitution. From that stage, the district level, you could have a process of selecting, vetting and elect and perhaps electing or through a combination of election and lottery representatives to go up to the next level, which would be five regional conventions. And at this stage, the goal for each of these five would be to take all these proposals, plus other ideas they have, and put it all together into a coherent... Deliberate and put them together into a coherent... Constitution, their own draft. So at that stage, you emerge with five drafts of a national Constitution, and that would then, those would all be sent to... The final stage, a national convention, again, representatives from the regional conventions would attend the national one, and you could select them by, again, a combination of election or lottery. And then at the national. The goal there would be for them to harmonize these five drafts into the best one that they think they can create. And again, with input from experts and scholars in their own research. As well as perhaps other avenues for everyday people to participate. From there, you'd emerge with a single draft. And then we call for two steps for ratification. The first step would be to submit that draft to a national... Constitutional jury. The way I described it earlier, it would be a large jury of, let's say, a thousand Americans picked at random. So these people have not been part of the process of drafting. They're impartial. And they would come together and you would submit the Constitution to them and again, do the trial of the... Of the... The draft for and against and evidence and... And debate.
Paul - 00:47:34:
Deliberation.
Nick - 00:47:35:
Adversarial. And then they would vote by secret ballot. And if they could either reject it and offer. Comments on why they're rejecting it and they could kick it back to the, to the lower stages to, for revision. Or if they approve it and you could have a certain threshold of approval, maybe two-thirds of the... Jerry, you then could submit that to a national referendum in which every American could vote. And that final stage, referenda are... Are good in some ways because everyone in theory can participate. They also have some flaws. We saw that with Brexit. And they can succumb to the similar flaws of elections where people can be misinformed or not informed or whatever. And so before the referendum, before the vote, you could have. Some kind of... Deliberation day, let's say, where people would be required to attend a session where they would learn about the new constitutional draft. They would. Be in conversation with their neighbors and experts. They would get informed, they'd deliberate, and that would give them a better basis for thinking through their own. Decision and then you could have the vote and if a majority approved you would have the new Constitution that way and that whole process It would take a few months, but it would be quite a fascinating and truly democratic approach to a national social contract and a new vision of governance.
Paul - 00:49:17:
Yeah, thank you for sharing that vision. And it's very grounded in a pragmatic operational possibility. And it really lit me up just listening to you right now. And I want to thank you for that. And may your vision become manifested in our time. And I want to thank you for being on the podcast. And we'll be sure to include these papers in the show notes so our listeners can get quick access to those ideas. So thanks, Nick, for being on the program today. And look forward to doing our great work together.
Nick - 00:49:47:
Thank you, Paul. It was a real pleasure.
Paul - 00:49:55:
Thank you, folks, for listening in on that interview with Nick Coccoma and the ideas that he has put forward for reconstructing our democracy, our legislature. He created a set of ideas to unlock our political imagination, to convene a national people's convention, to recreate our constitutional framework. And he is wired into the democracy movement in the United States. And he and I are joining forces now to try to manifest some of these ideas as fast as possible so that we can bring together the American people, we can unify, we can create our country to fulfill on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans. And Nick is undoubtedly a revolutionary optimist. He's an intensive imagineer. And he's bringing forward. His ideas in ways that can actually happen with that pragmatic real world possibility. So it's been an honor to work with him. And I hope that his ideas will come to pass very, very soon in our time. Thank you.
Announcer - 00:51:16:
Are you ready to be part of the revolution? To learn more about Revolutionary Optimism, please visit revolutionaryoptimism.com. To get to know Dr. Zeitz, please visit drpaulzeitz.com. And to explore building movements, please visit unifymovements.org. If you like this show, be sure to follow on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. Revolutionary Optimism, transforming the world one episode at a time.