I like the fact that Mark is addressing this and that he is drawing attention to Woodrow Wilson who I have said countless times here was the worst American president in our history as a nation.
The 16th, 17th and 18th Amendments were all passed quickly in the first term of Wilson. The 18th we know was repealed because it intruded into the personal lives of Americans as an original ‘nanny state’ intrusion.
The 16th Amendment started out taxing Americans 1% AFTER exemptions for living expenses and so 98% of the electorate was left untaxed. So nobody much cared about the effects of the 16th Amendment because it didn’t appear on anyone’s personal radar. It was a stealth amendment. Today the Left still tries to impose income taxes in states without an income tax, and they always say “but it’s only 1%”. I kid you not, they always propose it at 1%.
The 17th Amendment was different because popularly elected Senators found themselves in a new world where they need not listen to state legislatures any longer. It didn’t affect voters but it had an immediate effect on states. By the time it was firmly ensconced in electoral politics the voting public couldn’t see the downside as they do now. We have become effectively the United State of America and tending to the United Socialist State of America.
For sure, both the 16th and 17th Amendments had historical problems before Wilson. But the remedy via was akin to surgically removing the larynx to cure a case of strep throat.
Pre-16th Amendment tax provisions had problems arise as an argument to the ‘disproportionate burden’ issue among taxpayers. This has been remedied brilliantly by the architects of the FairTax legislation bill HR 25 in Congress.
Pre-17th Amendment provisions had problems arise in cronyism and absent seats in the US Senate. This is easily remedied by leaving popular voting in place but giving power to the states to recall the Senators with a higher bar to run again.
Both the 16th and the 17th were ill thought out, not worthy of the brilliant minds that established the US Constitution. The 16th Amendment must be repealed entirely and replaced with the FairTax which is constitutional without the 16th Amendment. The 17th Amendment needs only modification to give the States a powerful control over non-responsive Senators.
The 17th Amendment did not simply mean the people vote for members to both houses of Congress. It meant member State republics no longer shared in the larger government. The States lost the single structural weapon to limit the national government to enumerated powers and keep it out of their local matters. For practical purposes the 10th Amendment no longer exists. As feared by the Federalists over two hundred years ago, without State participation, a national government would inevitably expand, become despotic, oppressive and soon snuff out our freedoms.
Consider the following warning from James Madison. At the Virginia ratification convention on June 6th 1788, he responded to Patrick Henry’s charge that the Constitution’s enumerated powers would be usurped and our freedoms destroyed by a national government that would quickly seize all power.
Madison: “If the general government were wholly independent of the governments of the particular states, then, indeed, usurpation might be expected to the fullest extent. But, sir, on whom does this general government depend? It derives its authority from these governments, and from the same sources from which their authority is derived.”
Indeed. The 17th removed State agency from the federal republic. As predicted by Montesquieu, Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike, we slipped into an overwhelming, consolidated national government that oppresses both the States and us with raw force.