A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.

gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 440 points –
washingtonpost.com
345

You are viewing a single comment

Reagan started to get in to ideas of unitary executive theory and Bush was another proponent. The founders often debated, famously Hamilton, what the "executive" role actually meant for the office, and it was left vague as a lot of their ideas were. In the context of the time you had landowners being allowed to vote, the whole point of the government was basically to ensure no states had power over any other, then over time the executive branch developed and expanded and presidents had to see what that meant testing limits over time. I don't think this plan would be successful and if it were it would probably be bad by virtue of who would be in power.

Landowning was never a requirement on the federal level in the US. It was allowed to be a requirement for the states for a little while, few states bothered and the ones that did gave it up.

Look in to the men's suffrage movement, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky were the only three states to have full adult suffrage for white males before 1800.

18th century property qualifications:

Connecticut: an estate worth 40 shillings annually or £40 of personal property

Delaware: fifty acres of land (twelve under cultivation) or £40 of personal property

Georgia: fifty acres of land

Maryland: fifty acres of land and £40 personal property

Massachusetts Bay: an estate worth 40 shillings annually or £40 of personal property

New Hampshire: £50 of personal property

New Jersey: one-hundred acres of land, or real estate or personal property £50

New York: £40 of personal property or ownership of land

North Carolina: fifty acres of land

Pennsylvania: fifty acres of land or £50 of personal property

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations: personal property worth £40 or yielding 50 shillings annually

South Carolina: one-hundred acres of land on which taxes were paid; or a town house or lot worth £60 on which taxes were paid; or payment of 10 shillings in taxes

Virginia: fifty acres of vacant land, twenty-fives acres of cultivated land, and a house twelve feet by twelve feet; or a town lot and a house twelve feet by twelve