Posted on 04/28/2013 6:12:04 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
With the Autumnal Equinox now behind us, We, the People of Massachusetts, are reminded that in less than a month’s time we’ll be called upon to elect (or re-elect) a Senator to represent our interests in the upper house of the United States Congress.
T’was not always thus.
Those among my readers who stayed awake during Mrs. McGuffey’s 9th Grade History class will recall that, until the 2nd decade of the 20th Century, U.S. Senators were (per Art. 1, Sec. 3 of the Constitution) chosen by state legislatures, not elected directly by the people as at present.
The most contentious issue facing the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia during the long, hot summer of 1787 was the question of suffrage; how many legislative representatives were to be chosen, and by whom and for how long? The larger states demanded representation consistent with size, while the smaller ones held out for numerical equality irrespective of geographical footprint or population.
The convention was deadlocked and in danger of collapse when Roger Sherman of Connecticut proposed what came to be known as “The Great Compromise”: a bicameral legislature with the lower house being directly elected based on population size, and the seats in the upper house to be filled by two senators from each state, chosen by their state legislatures. This latter stipulation was deemed essential to the “federal” character of the new government, i.e., the sharing of power by the national and the state governments. Maintaining such political equilibrium has been a shaky and sometimes lethal balancing act for the past 225 years.
By 1826, reformers were beginning to question the democratic legitimacy of a non-popularly-elected Senate, and calls for a direct-election amendment began to be heard. However, nothing resulted at the time or when it was tried again in 1829 and 1855 during the Jacksonian Democracy era.
With the Gilded Age (in Mark Twain’s sardonic coinage) in full noxious bloom by the 1890s, industrialization was producing the sort of huge fortunes and equally large disparities of wealth and power that are the breeding ground for corruption and political malfeasance. The “Millionaires’ Club” (as the Senate was then pejoratively known) was not immune to such influences. We look, for example, at “Copper King” William Andrews Clark who bribed the Montana legislature to secure a U.S. Senate seat, but was caught out before taking office. Then there was Nelson W. Aldrich, the most powerful chairman in the history of the Senate Finance committee who became enormously rich by easing tariff legislation for his cronies in the oil, tobacco and sugar trusts, but stumbled in his bid for a 5th term when his proffered $200,000 bribe failed to get him re-elected.
A contemporary fable about Grover Cleveland had it that that his wife woke him up one night crying: “Wake up! There are robbers in the house.” The president replied: “I think you are mistaken. There are no robbers in the House, but there are lots in the Senate.”
Coincidentally, the era spawned the doctrine of social Darwinism, promoted by the writings of William Graham Sumner and others, which preached a survival of the fittest dogma that the ability to acquire wealth is an evolutionary marker of genetic superiority.
And then there were the deadlocks in the state legislatures that occurred regularly when the lower house was in the hands of one party and the upper house another, and neither could agree on a senatorial candidate. Even more frequent than instances of outright corruption, 71 such standoffs resulted in 17 senate seats going unfilled for an entire legislative session or longer. Needless to say, other important state matters went unattended to, and often lesser-qualified candidates were selected in desperate last ditch efforts to reach a compromise.
These goings on did not fail to catch the attention of reformers, and the ‘90s saw the ascendancy of the Populists, a potent alliance of western agrarian and eastern labor interests who had not been invited to the party. Trust-busting presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft were elected to office in 1901 and 1909 respectively, ushering in the historically significant Progressive Movement, the effects of which are still with us today.
By 1912, the electorate, fed up with the excesses of wealth and power exhibited over the preceding several decades, pressured Congress to pass an Amendment providing for the direct election of Senators, and by the following year it had done so. Overwhelmingly ratified by the states, the 17th Amendment became law on April 8, 1913.
Gone missing in all this ferment was the venerated concept of federalism; the formal presence of state influence in Washington. The role of the states as equal partners in the governing of the nation was ever after diminished. Formerly, state legislatures could, and did, instruct their U.S. senators how to vote; but no longer. Ralph A. Rossum, writing in the San Diego Law Review, notes that the debate over the Amendment’s adoption lacked “any serious or systematic considerations of its potential impact on federalism…The popular press, the party platforms, the state memorials, the house and senate debates, and the state legislative debates during ratification focused almost exclusively on expanding democracy, eliminating political corruption, defeating elitism and freeing the states from what they had come to regard as an onerous and difficult responsibility.”
With the 17th Amendment, our great experiment in democracy had passed another stress test, as it had oft-times before, and most certainly will have to again.
The 17th was a horrible mistake and should be repealed.
And ... ummmmm ... how'd that work out?
Most importantly, the article ignores that the Founding States established both the Senate and the Electoral College as firewalls to prevent the country from becoming a mob-ruled democracy, which is what has happened anyway, as opposed to remaining a constitutonal republic as the Founding States had intended. Progressives have already nuked the unique control of the Senate by state legislatures as evidenced by 17A, and now they're trying to force the election of the president into mob rule by effectively eliminating the Electoral Collage.
Next, the article reflects the same Progressive Movement OWG propaganda that likely spooked Constitution-ignorant citizens to pressure their state lawmakers to ratify 17A in 1913. More specifically, the propaganda unsuprisingly tries to fan the flames of rich class / poor class warfare as evidenced by its volunteering the names of a few wealthy people who bribed or tried to bribe their way into the Senate.
Next, regarding wealthy citizens, the article overlooks that the federal government and its power-limiting Constitution was arguably intended to be a toy of the rich. This is evidenced by the facts that not only were most of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention wealthy, George Washington being a Bill Gates of his time, but by signing their names to the Constitution the delegates basically committed themselves, their wealthy friends and other rich citizens to uniquely paying the entire bill for making the federal government operate. This is evidenced by the following excerpt from Thomas Jefferson's writings which has been referenced in related threads.
"The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied (emphasis added). … Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.
But more importantly, in Jefferson's time Justice John Marshall had officially clarified the following about Congress's limited power to lay taxes. Justice Marshall had noted that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue which Congress cannot justify under its Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Military issues aside, one of the only federal government services that the Constitution requires citizens who use it to pay for is the US mail service as evidenced by Congress's enumerated power to regulate the US postal service, specifically Clause 7 of Section 8 of Article I.
So since the rich were uniquely paying the taxes to run the constitutionally limited power federal government, why not let them them have their fun by bribing federal Congressmen? Again, the federal government is their toy anyway. And when they get finished playing with their toy they can always remind Congress about Justice Marshall's clarification of Congress's limited power to lay taxes. After all Marshall's clarification is evidence that Founders arguably gave the rich the job of watchdogging Congress's compliance with Section 8 anyway.
So other than what the article ignores was possibly Progressive Movement gossip about Senate corruption in order to advance its agenda to unconstitutonally centralize government power in DC, I am reluctant to believe that citizens were so upset with how the Senate was possibly mismanaging postal services that citizens felt that they needed the right to vote for their federal senators.
Next, while I used to trumpet the repeal of 17A and would still support its repeal, the problem with unconstitutonally big federal government is not 17A imo. After all, senators swear to protect and defend the Constituton, including respecting Justice Marshall's clarification of Congress's limited power to lay taxes, no matter who elects them. The real problem with the country is the following imo.
While patriots understandably point their fingers at Obama as being the problem with the country, given that generations of patriots have not been making sure that their children are being taught the Constitution as the Founding States had intended for it to be understood imo, it's no surprise that tyrants like Obama can infiltrate the system and wreak havoc with it. But since patriots are evidently too "fat, dumb and happy" to make sure that their children are taught the Founding States' division of federal and state government powers in order to be on their guard against people like Obama, many times I think that patriots can sleep in the bed that they've made for themselves.
Gone missing in all this ferment was the venerated concept of federalism; the formal presence of state influence in Washington. The role of the states as equal partners in the governing of the nation was ever after diminished. Formerly, state legislatures could, and did, instruct their U.S. senators how to vote; but no longer. Ralph A. Rossum, writing in the San Diego Law Review, notes that the debate over the Amendment’s adoption lacked “any serious or systematic considerations of its potential impact on federalism…The popular press, the party platforms, the state memorials, the house and senate debates, and the state legislative debates during ratification focused almost exclusively on expanding democracy, eliminating political corruption, defeating elitism and freeing the states from what they had come to regard as an onerous and difficult responsibility.”Interesting bit of political history . . .
While patriots understandably point their fingers at Obama as being the problem with the country, given that generations of patriots have not been making sure that their children are being taught the Constitution as the Founding States had intended for it to be understood imo, it's no surprise that tyrants like Obama can infiltrate the system and wreak havoc with it. But since patriots are evidently too "fat, dumb and happy" to make sure that their children are taught the Founding States' division of federal and state government powers in order to be on their guard against people like Obama, many times I think that patriots can sleep in the bed that they've made for themselves.
The real problem, plain as the nose on your face, is that whereas journalism is, was, and always will be politics (a.k.a. “making a difference”), journalism ceased to be many individual newspapers with as many individual perspectives. Journalism was converted into a monolith by the Associated Press, and was able to use its great propaganda power to suppress criticism of its great propaganda power.“Liberals” and journalists love Adam Smith’s critique of monopoly: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends . . . in some contrivance to raise prices.” They do not, however, apply the full paragraph of Smith’s thought to their own pet causes:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)The Associated Press newswire is a continuous virtual “meeting” of all major newspapers and broadcast networks, which has been going on since the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Accordingly journalism long ago ceased being anything but "a conspiracy against the public.” A conspiracy to promote talk (journalism’s stock-in-trade) above the efficient and economical satisfaction of the needs of the public as creatively discerned by people able to meet them and desirous of the credit for doing so.Steve Jobs’ famous disdain for focus groups to determine what the people want - Jobs knew that we didn’t know what we want until somebody shows it to us. Likewise, Edison showing his electric light, and phonograph and movies. Likewise, Rockefeller and his gasoline, and Henry Ford and his mass-marketed automobile. And any number of inventions, great and small, brought to the people by entrepreneurs. All desire to see people using their inventions, and desire credit for making them available in stores at reasonable prices. The entrepreneur tries to earn prestige by doing things; the journalist pursues prestige by self-promotion. It is natural that the journalist has envy and hatred for the entrepreneur - and natural that the journalist will enthusiastically criticize the entrepreneur at any opportunity.
The tendency of journalists to attack the people who provide goods and services to the public, and to promote politicians who do likewise, constitutes a conspiracy against the public. Journalists call that conspiracy “liberal” or “progressive” politics.
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