Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to re: What the hell do conservatives want? An alternate history project

rewriting history
Robert — (archived)

Rewriting the Constitution isn't the same as rewriting history, and rewriting history is what an "alternate history" experiment is all about.

The basic technique is to posit that one single event in the past turned out differently, and then logically construct a new history based on that change. For example, suppose that Nixon had defeated Kennedy in 1960. This is an easy one, because in our timeline Nixon eventually did become President, so we have solid evidence to predict what he'd have done as an earlier President. There probably wouldn't have been a Vietnam War, and definitely wouldn't have been an Apollo program. I'd guess that Nixon would have instituted a milder form of LBJ's Great Society. It's dicier to speculate about psychology, but I wouldn't rule out an early version of Watergate based on the personality flaws that were revealed by the Watergate that did happen.

So going back to 1789, you'd have to create a premise in which a different bunch of people formed the Constitutional Convention, bringing different philosophies to bear as they wrote the Constitution. That's such a severe change that you'd probably have to go back even earlier and posit a very different outcome to the Revolution, due perhaps to a different outcome of different battles. Maybe the British captured and executed most of the people we call the Founders, or something like that. The point is that how the Constitution turned out is a consequence of historical events, but not a historical event in its own right.

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