Posted on 04/08/2013 12:00:11 PM PDT by Jacquerie
Happy Anniversary! Today marks 100 years of the 17th Amendment.
To Freepers, our statist government is a daily “fingernails across the chalkboard” experience. What will the likes of Senators Schumer and Durbin or Representatives Hoyer, Lee and Pelosi try to pull next? Why did our national government morph from one designed to protect our freedoms into one that promises increasing oppression? More to the point, why did the federal government generally remain within its Constitutional bounds prior to WWI and not thereafter?
Thank the 17th Amendment.
It fundamentally altered the Constitution; it pulled the keystone from the arch of our Framers’ structure. The structure upon which our freedoms depend is not a Bill of Rights as many believe; it was and remains the separation of powers. That separation began with a division of power between the States and Federal government, not with the division of legislative, judicial and executive departments within the Federal government.
In Federalist 51, James Madison briefly contrasted the structure of ancient, simple republics and our new compound republic. As opposed to simple republics, in which the people granted power to a single government, in our Constitution power was first divided between the States and Federal governments. To quote Madison, “Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same that each will be controlled by itself.” By “different governments,” Madison meant the States and new federal government.
Republican freedoms are not only threatened by oppression from rulers; the greater threat resides within the people themselves. Madison described this democracy as the tyranny of the majority: “If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.” One method to combat majoritarian tyranny was “by creating a will in the community independent of the majority . . .” A Senate representing the States provided Madison’s independent “will.” Our current Senate structure merely invites a republic destroying majoritarianism which, from their study of history, our Framers sought to avoid.
Consider the guarantees in our Bill of Rights. How many remain in force? When did the national (it has not been federal for 100 years) government gather its full steam assault on them? It began when the structural protection previously provided by the States was removed. Without the institutional means to secure our rights, provided by the States, the Bill of Rights became but unenforceable parchment barriers to consolidated government made possible by the 17th.
I'm reading a Federalist Pamphlet from April 1788. Among other topics, the author spent a page going over the history of English rights and how they were reluctantly granted by Princes. No written constitution of course, but the people carved out rights from a sea of powers belonging to the sovereign, the King. This pamphlet was designed for the average reader of the time and given wide distribution in Virginia. It would flop as a post at FreeRepublic and be derided by any non-conservative as reactionary, irrelevant . . . dead white men, etc. My larger point is that I fear we have become too corrupted to understand what we lost and why we must return to federal and republican government.
-PJ
As horrible as the 17th Amendment is, I think the 16th is worse. it is a tough call as to which sucks more.
You may wish to send your links to this Article V conference late this month at http://www.ucfavconference.org/
Yeah. I reread the post from February 2013 between you and the Field Marshal. I think I held my own then, too.
-PJ
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.