Even though according to the Rambam the peace of the State is one of the major goals of the Torah it seems to me that the system depends highly on the kind of people involved. That is I think that the Constitution of the USA is the crowning peak of political thought--the summit of thousands of years of political thought starting from Plato. Still it only works for a certain kind of person, that is a WASP. Surely no one can imagine that in the turmoil that Russia was in during its civil war crisis, that simply adopting something like the Constitution would have solved anything at all. Russia became the USSR because that was the only viable option on the table that would put an end to the nightmare of chaos that they were in. This in not my own insight. I was once talking with a Mormon that was a professional economist about capitalism as opposed to socialism in the context of the USA in the 1920's and 1930's. He mentioned this idea to me -- that when things area mess sometimes one needs to central government to assume greater powers which can happen only in a socialistic system.
It was the exact argument that the Founding Fathers of the USA made in the Federalist Papers about the need for a central unified federal government. But what worked in the USA would not have worked in Russia and the Ukraine where there already was a central government-- the last Tzar who was a disaster.
Some people who are in Russia and the Ukraine are so criminally minded in their very DNA that nothing like the Constitution would have helped. The Russians themselves were very much aware of this. It was not spoken, but it was clear that in the vast empire of Russia there were populations that had and still have criminal elements above the percentage in which a Constitution like the USA would have worked. As Sapolsky says--a lot depends on DNA. Sometimes criminal behavior is simply encoded in some people's DNA and there is nothing one can do to change it.
It was the exact argument that the Founding Fathers of the USA made in the Federalist Papers about the need for a central unified federal government. But what worked in the USA would not have worked in Russia and the Ukraine where there already was a central government-- the last Tzar who was a disaster.
Some people who are in Russia and the Ukraine are so criminally minded in their very DNA that nothing like the Constitution would have helped. The Russians themselves were very much aware of this. It was not spoken, but it was clear that in the vast empire of Russia there were populations that had and still have criminal elements above the percentage in which a Constitution like the USA would have worked. As Sapolsky says--a lot depends on DNA. Sometimes criminal behavior is simply encoded in some people's DNA and there is nothing one can do to change it.
