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Warning: TL;DR

- If statistics is correct and we want to know what the people think to within 1% then we would need to regularly poll 10,000 representative citizens regardless of the total population. Since the Congress has only 435 members, at best we only know the peoples' will to within a bit better than 5%. But of course that is only if the 435 members are truly representative, which is doubtful since many of them are lawyers and many of them seem to go native and start representing the Feds and the lobbyists rather than the folks back home. Who says that DC doesn't have proper representation! Ha.

- It seems that over time the two houses have switched places since Senators are elected by popular vote and, in the House, Wyoming has a much bigger say proportionally with their single representative.

- With regard to the 17th Amendment: There are those who are opposed to the 17th Amendment on philosophical grounds, but I believe many are also opposed on pragmatic grounds. The belief is that since Republicans control a majority of governorships and state legislatures, that a solid Republican majority in the Senate could be secured from now into the foreseeable future. However, I believe this would only be true under 'static' reasoning. Republicans criticize Democrats when the Dems suggest that raising taxes will necessarily raise revenues. Republicans point out that this is 'static' reasoning which ignores the fact that if taxes are raised then people will adjust their behavior to avoid the new taxes. Similarly, Republicans believe that if the 17th Amendment is repealed that they will still enjoy control of most state governments. However, Dems who now occasionally vote for Republicans (even in states like Massachusetts) in order to get their budgets and crime back under control, may now decide to bite the bullet and continue to support bad Dem governments just to guarantee a Dem controlled Senate.

- A bigger question is: Do states still have well-defined and distinct self-interests? It seems as if most states have urban and rural districts that have completely different interests. There are also many people in each state who are either federal employees, state/local employees funded by federal grants, or recipients of federal aid from welfare to Social Security and Medicare. How can it be said that states have well-defined and distinct interests that could be better protected if their Senators were selected by their legislature rather than their citizens? Californians allowed water to be diverted to protect a population of small fish rather than to support the important agricultural sector of the state. Boise no longer shares the same views as Idaho as a whole. Salt Lake City similarly has voted for Dems even though the state as a whole is still largely conservative.

- As far as "preventing financial stupidity" goes, I think that is a utopian dream. Up until recently the Federal Government was the only entity allowed to go into debt without end. Their ability to print money while state and local budgets were weighed down by an increasing number of federal mandates and liberal pipe dreams, meant that states and cities are now more than ever dependent on the Feds. One of the reasons that the Dems really wanted to remove Trump was because they desperately wanted Federal money to continue to Dem states and cities to help them clean up the mess they caused with the riots, looting, arson and defund police nonsense. The only silver lining is that recently a couple of cities in California were allowed to declare bankruptcy. If cities and states can free themselves from the Federal purse strings, then there is some hope of local autonomy. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

- With regard to legislating from the bureaucracy: There was an important case when Nixon decided to spend part of the budget in a different way than was outlined by the Congress. This went to the courts and the court ruled that the legislature defines how the money will be spent, and the executive branch had to implement that as stated. If this is the case, then why does the bureaucracy seem to have much more power than the Congress? I believe it is because the Congress are wimps who don't want to take responsibility for the bills they pass. They are only too happy to allow the bureaucrats to decide what their bills "really meant". This began years ago. My understanding is that the Public Accommodations Act was only passed because there was a handshake agreement that it would only apply to essential services such as food, gas, lodging, etc. Later the Act was expanded to include such "essential services" as wedding cakes, etc. Why wasn't a specific list of services included in the Act? I guess it would have been bad optics. The result is a daily assault on religious liberties, but what do congressmen provided escorts by lobbyists care about religious liberties?

- Lastly, I believe there is a major disagreement between the left and the right with regard to how our government has evolved over the past couple of centuries. Back in the 70's traditional Catholics would refer to their more liberal counterparts as "cafeteria style Catholics", i.e. rather than believing everything the Church had decreed, they would pick and choose what they liked and ignore the decrees they didn't. If someone who believes that the Enlightenment was an overall positive for humanity can be called an Enlightenmentist, then I believe that many conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals are "cafeteria style Enlightenmentists". They are OK with the continuing advances of science and engineering that resulted from the scientific revolution that came about during the Enlightenment. However, they seem to think that the last word on political theory came from John Locke, and the last word on economics came from Adam Smith. Yes, maybe they will praise a Milton Friedman or von Mises, etc. but only because they generally agree with Smith and are only reformulating his positions for the current year. Likewise they will quote Burke or others who, again, are only restating what Locke might have said.

The liberals and progressives, on the other hand, are true Enlightenment thinkers. They support progress on all fronts. They are OK with Kant, Hegel, Marx, Rawls, etc. They are OK with Keynes, Wolff, etc. They see these philosophers as a continuation of the Enlightenment. They view what is going on in the US as a continuation of the Revolution and an evolution of the Constitution not a repudiation.

Yes, they are against some technology, but only because they believe that science has shown that some technologies do more harm than good. Yes, they believe in political and economic theories that have empirically resulted in more suffering than liberation. However, they have their "advanced" notions of philosophy that show how capitalism is the real culprit in these failures.

The liberals are either dismissive or fearful of conservatives. They either think that we are idiots for only following the Enlightenment so far and believing that ideas cooked up in the 1700's still apply today, or they believe that we know better and are only denying the latest "advances" in political and economic theory for self-interested reasons that oppress the poor and downtrodden (women, minorities, and the LGBTQIA community hardest hit).

So the Ivy League Oligarchs who currently run this country from behind the scenes are really products of the Enlightenment. They believe they are following it to its logical conclusion and have the best interests of the people in mind and at heart. To them, we conservatives are a mix of narrow-minded troglodytes and self-interested libertarian sociopaths. To them, the revolution hasn't been repudiated as you suggest, but it continues as more and more people are included under the umbrella (or rainbow?) of tolerance and diversity. Some of them may be bad actors grifting off the hopey-changey (e.g. Clintons, Obamas, etc.) but there are plenty who honestly believe they are taking the US in the right direction.

Too bad that direction is headed off a cliff.