A healthy and effective Legislative Branch requires two bodies that have different perspectives of governance and society.

In England this is achieved by the British Parliament having a House of Commons and a House of Lords. Members of the House of Commons are regular people who have to be elected in the usual way. Members of the House of Lords are simply people with money, land, and history. No matter what their political beliefs, the members of the two bodies have different views of governance and society overall. This gives the British Parliament greater depth; a Political Parallax.

In America, the Legislative Branch lacks Political Parallax. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate are regular people who are elected into office by the same process. Thus, regardless of political beliefs, both bodies have the exact same view of governance and society. They are both money driven; bending to the will of whoever will fund their future campaigns and guarantee their stay in public office.

In my view, we could fix this problem in a way that reflects our ideals by changing the Senate. Instead of electing whoever spends the most money in their campaign (funded by their willingness to tell whatever lie they have to) each state would send two tenured professors for a six year term; staggered by three years. One professor would be of the Hard Sciences, and the other would be of the Arts and Humanities. These members would be selected by a conclave of their peers.

(Yes… I am aware that there is room for corruption here. But, perfection is the enemy of good enough. Measures are desperately needed to protect us from corruption now. Thus, putting measures in place to protect from any corruption in my system is not unfathomable. It was once said that the only certainties are death and taxes. I would add corruption to this list: death, corruption, and taxes.)