> One difference here is that when the USG says "well it's all done according to law", that law was written and passed by an institution who at least nominally represents and is elected by the people. I don't know if the same can be said of the USSR.

The USSR was also nominally run under laws, which were notionally written and formally adopted by an institution which at least nominally represented and was elected by the people, and no doubt for any particular policy the regime could point to some justification in some provision of the Constitution and laws for the authority to carry out the action.

I am asking this out of genuine interest and lack of knowledge - was there a representative legislative body in the USSR in the 1920s?

I believe the Congress of Soviets was an indirectly elected representative legislative body elected by the local Soviets.

Pre-WWI, Russia was a feudal system. After the revolution, pretty much everything was done via some kind of parliamentary procedures. Granted, Lenin was a bully and hammered through the things he wanted but he largely did it via parliamentary consensus. At least at first.

The problem now is that who you vote for doesn't represent you. They represent themselves, their donors and their social class/circle. They've also sworn an oath to the Constitution, then passed laws that are against that oath.

For all practical purposes the "classical constitution United States" that we were taught in school and media doesn't exist anymore. But we pretend it does for pragmatic reasons.

> For all practical purposes the "classical constitution United States" that we were taught in school and media doesn't exist anymore.

The Constitution never existed as anything more than an idea, and it has force and meaning to the exact extent to which the people choose to give it force and meaning (the same as any other law.)

Laws, including basic laws like the Constitution, aren't magical and self-enforcing; they are real or not to the extent that people give them effect. The idea that "the Constitution protects" this right or that limitation on government's power is the exact thing which guarantees that those things are not protected -- either people protect them by insisting on them, or they are not protected at all. The Constitution is, at most, a statement of intent about what the people will insist upon, and it loses credibility when the people are passive and don't follow through.

I believe that one of the reasons that Jefferson thought it was necessary for the Constitution to be rewritten and readopted every generation is that he recognized that the slide into passivity and lack of ownership of the Constitution was a natural trend that would, over time, render any Constitution into a dead letter.

I agree except I must point out that the Constitution was an agreement amongst the states, not an agreement with the people and the government.

The rhetoric of "the people" is extremely deceptive. Me, nor my forefathers, had their opinion represented at the constitutional convention. The people in "... a statement of intent about what the people will insist upon" is solely people who were at the convention.

Who wrote or ratified the Constitution is irrelevant to its effect in limiting government.

How people now are willing to defend what those people now perceive to be its limitations is all that matters.