I feel like celebrating the fact that a small handful of career politicians can’t choose Senators anymore.
The 17th Amendment not only is evil but utterly illogical.as well. Its repeal is an essential step toward restoring America as envisioned by its Founding Fathers.
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The 17th Amendment and Republican Freedom
The 17th Amendment, State Laws and the Independent Judiciary
The 17th Amendment, Gateway to Despotic Government
The 17th Amendment and Administrative Government
Completely agree direct elections for senators doomed us.
Agreed! Completely there.
Excellent treatise. Completely agree. The 17th needs to be repealed to get us back to a functional Constitutonal Republic as originally designed.
For years I have thought that the key to restoring balance to the Constitution was repealing the 17th Amendment.
1913 is a year that will live in U.S. History infamy. First the 16th Amendment allowing congress to tax incomes “without regard to any census or enumeration” and then the 17th which in effect destroyed federalism. Not to mention that Woodrow Wilson was installed as POTUS ushering in the Progressive Era that hit it’s zenith with FDR. The rest is just window dressing. The Republic essentially died in 1913.
Agree 100%
It’s time to call an article V convention. We must do this now before its too late. If the libs take Texas its game over. Repeal the 17th. Strike the interstate commerce clause completely. Clarify the 2nd amendment. Etc.
in general restore our republic and return freedom and liberty.
Now we need Mark Levin to get with the program and quit wasting time worrying about the next election or any other reforms from inside Washington. It’s time for the states and the people to restore liberty.
I cannot tell you how much I agree with this.
To be fair, the old system wasn’t a gem, either.
Nope.
Ya’ done good.
The 17th amendment effectively abolished the Senate and in its place it created a redundant house of reps.
Although we may not have a population knowledgeable enough about the nature of their own Federal Constitutional system to understand the devastating effect of this change. Much less knwoalgable enough about the nature of freedom & self-government to understand the cost of what is and has been lost as a result.
We who know cannot in our hearts deny the 17th Amendment’s effect to ourselves, nor the need to not only educate our population on the Constitution and John Loche theory upon which it’s founded. But to eventually guide them back toward a health respect for liberty and the competing decentralized interest which are necessary to practically defend & preserve freedom.
I love the idea, and I hope that it can eventually happen, but right now, I wouldn’t trust some of these legisl00tures to pick their own noses, much less U.S. Senators.
Besides the David Dewhurst problem, as Impy pointed out, there could also be Senator KARL ROVE! And don’t forget, we have Maryland, California, New York, Massachusetts, Colorado and other liberal-infested holes, whose legislatures would probably pick Senators-for-Life Martin O’Malley, Andrew Cuomo and so on.
Even if the legisl00tures shape up, there would need to be a few other reforms in place for repealing the 17th to really work.
1. Repeal the 16th Amendment and the Federal Reserve and put us back on a gold standard, so Senators couldn’t bribe the state legislatures as much with taxpayer- and debt-financed handouts.
2. Overturn Reynolds vs. Sims, so state Senates can once again be divided by geography, not demography (1 man, 1 vote). This would reduce the influence of liberal urban politics somewhat in choosing the Senators.
3. Make the House of Representatives much more numerous, say, 1 representative per every 50,000 people. Sure, there would be over 6,000 Congresspricks, but at least there’s a better chance they would actually represent people, rather than special interests and ideologies, since individual campaigns wouldn’t cost so much. Campaigning for a much smaller district would presumably cost much less, making special interest and party money less of a necessity.
Gotta go.