Go ahead and read the last line of Article 5 and you tell me that wasn’t intended to prevent exactly what has happened in the 17th Amendment.
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Uh... no. The last line states: “and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” This is not rocket science and it’s pretty plain on its face.
Suffrage is the ability to vote. Equal suffrage for each state refers to the two Senators that each state has in Congress. By having an equal number of Senators, each state was guaranteed equal voting ability within the U.S. Senate. Having the general population of a state elect their U.S. Senators directly instead of through their elected state legislature doesn’t change the number of U.S. Senators from their state. Equal suffrage for all states is maintained.
Wikipedia has a nice explanation:
“Thus, no individual state may have its representation in the Senate adjusted without its consent unless all other states have an identical change. That is to say, an amendment that changed this clause to provide that all states would get only one Senator (or three Senators, or any other number) could be ratified through the normal process, but an amendment that provided for some basis of representation other than strict numerical equality (for example, population, wealth, or land area) would require the assent of every state.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution
I agree, that is possible only if you regard the people of the State as the State. A Concept already rejected by Washington in its claim to superior sovereign power in domestic sphere, which is founded on the promis that Washington gets it’s power from the people. But if the States are the people then clearly they ceded no such power and their efforts to resist such separation are legitimate & necessary in every way.
I actually accept the concept that the States are their people as a distinct sovereign body from all the others in the world and most particularly the other 49 states. That the union that is theses united States is in fact a union of those states as body’s distinct not their component parts.
Unfourntatly that concept makes it difficult to accept a notion that the Federal Constitution can dictate how State’s govern themselves domestically.
If however the States are distinct entities separate from their populations, such as Washington has long contended in its effort to subjugate them, then enfranchisement was total abolished with the 17th Amendment, as their vote was given to a separate party, by Washington(without their consent).
A move that proved structurally catastrophic in eliminating the key checks necessary to sustain a federal union.