The Bitter Harvest of the 17th Amendment

Our once Free Republic continues to reel from a one hundred and four-year-old mistake: the 17th Amendment. Pardon me if I don’t celebrate tomorrow’s anniversary.

Republican theory demands the consent of the governed. From ancient Greece, republican Rome, Saxon Germany, and the English kingdom from which we declared our Independence, the component members of their societies had a place at the lawmaking table. Greek ecclesia, Roman tribunes and senators, Saxon Micklegemots, English commons, lords and king, encompassed the totality of their societies. By this, the consent of the governed was present in every law.

Unlike simpler Greek or Saxon societies which met in single-house democratic assemblies to craft their laws, the vast American Republic required representation of an additional component member, the states. Like the people, the states preceded the Union. Also like the people, the states relinquished some powers in exchange for legislative representation. Out of necessity, our republic was a compound form; it featured both democratic and federal elements.

It could be no other way, for the states would have never subjected themselves to a government in which they were not represented. Until the 17th Amendment, no republic in history denied the lawmaking consent of a component member. Since 1913, the states have been subjected to arbitrary, despotic rule – tyranny. While the Constitution and subsequent laws and court rulings still act on the states, the states have no say in the government of their creation. Left in the wake of the 17A is federalism without a federal government!

Post-17A, the senate is an institution whose foundation cannot support its purposes. Popularly derived bodies are not known for their caution and circumspection. Instead of reflecting the distinct interests of the various states, senators are no more than at-large politicians with extended terms . . .

...why should the persons they choose to represent them be limited in the number of terms they can do so?

I posted this on October 2, 2014 in the thread A new case for Congressional term limits.

I don't support term limits. I do support repealing the 17th amendment.
It's odd to see the same people who want to keep the right to vote for Senators also want term limits on them. It's the old "stop me before I kill again" argument.
Either keep the right to vote for someone for the Senate for as long as you want to keep sending them back, or eliminate the right to vote for Senators altogether and let the state legislature select the Senator. Then you vote for the legislature that you want.
But don't demand the right to vote for your Senator, but only let me do it once.
Presidential term limits are a post-17th amendment phenomenon. I wonder why we never had a 3rd term president until Roosevelt? Was it because the Senate no longer represented the states, and the states couldn't influence the federal government like they did just 20 years earlier?
House Representatives are too numerous to care, and their districts are too small to limit whom the locals wish to send to Congress. However, with the rise of the influence of national parties due to the need to raise campaign cash for 33 Senate elections every two years, there is a party trickle-down of money to the House by party members in the Senate. If you eliminate Senate elections, you dry up a major source of campaign funds that would naturally flow to House races, too.
Repeal the 17th amendment, and a natural term limit will be restored across all of the federal government.

-PJ

Yes, as President of the convention his direct participation was but a blip. However, he exerted enormous influence outside the convention. Lacking golf courses in the 18th century, much informal discussion was conducted among the delegates out of doors, especially when GW invited delegates to join him at supper.

In America's Second Revolution by Harlow Giles Unger, I found that GW exerted pressure at critical times, such as the debate over the New Jersey Plan, and especially when the convention was deadlocked over state representation in the senate. Without him, the convention would have likely dissolved.

GW was indeed the indispensable man.

Yeah, it surprised me too that Kelo was not mentioned, as well as one from (I believe) 1934 that upheld prosecution of a farmer for raising enough feed for his own cattle that it *interfered w/ interstate commerce* (as opposed to his having to purchase feed from another party). The case was not about his selling to others, but strictly for feeding his own herd. Just crazy.

...Therefore a case of criminalizing ‘refusal’ to buy a good or service, way before Obamacare began to wield the IRS as a bludgeon against us all.

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