Posted on 09/06/2004 2:44:52 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
Retro, Metro. Retro, Metro.
If those words seem familiar, you may have seen an ad campaign talking about a great divide in America.
The themes of the campaign are echoed in a new book titled The Great Divide: Retro Versus Metro America. It is written by entrepreneur John Sperling. Sperling argues that America has effectively become two nations. One nation that he labels Retro is traditional, religious, Southern and rural, opposed to abortion, taxes, and welfare. By contrast, Metros tend to be urban, tolerant, and secular, committed to excellence in the arts and sciences. According to Sperling, Metro-Americans produce the majority of the countrys tax revenue. He laments, some $200 billion a year in taxes flow from Metro states to Retro states. If America is ever to be a true United States , he asserts, it must embrace these Metro values of inclusion and respect.
The Retro/Metro campaign exposes a great role reversal from the last fifty years of liberalism. Traditional liberalism said the wealthy should share their money with the poor. But the new liberal, represented by Sperling, resents poor, blue-collar Americans. And they resent the fact that so-called Retro states with their smaller populations enjoy the same number of senators as Metro states. And they resent their electoral votes.
In fact the Retro/Metro campaign appears to be a thinly veiled assault on the Electoral College. The danger of this trend is exposed by Newsweek columnist George Will. Will points to a proposal on the ballot in Colorado to change the current winner-take-all system of allocating electoral votes. Instead, the states electoral votes would be divided according to each candidates percentage of the popular vote.
This is a bad idea, Will says, not only because of its partisan aims, but because it ignores how the electoral vote system nurtures crucial political virtues.
As Will explains, Americas constitutional system aims not merely for majority rule but for rule by certain kinds of majorities. It aims for majorities suited to moderate, consensual governance of a heterogeneous . . . nation with myriad regional and other diversities. All 537 persons elected to national officethe president, senators, and representativesare chosen by majorities that reflect the nations federal nature. They are elected by majorities within states or within states congressional districts.
As political scientist Judith Best notes, the electoral-vote system, in combination with the winner-take-all allocation used by nearly every state, creates a distribution condition. Without it, politicians could win national office simply by obtaining the votes of Metro citizenspeople in states like New York and California. Citizens in smaller states would lose any chance of real representation.
While the liberal Retro/Metro campaign thinks this is a great idea, our founders did not. They wanted to prevent various factions from being able to unite their votes across state lines to create a tyranny of the majority. The Retro/Metro campaign is, in effect, a power grab, an effort to disenfranchise the poor and those of faith. We need to warn our neighbors and explain why abandoning the Electoral College is a dangerous ideaone we should reject.
13.
50 * (1/4) = 12.5
That statement is becoming my pet peeve. Republic is just as generic a term as democracy. I could easily name half a dozen forms of republican government, from the Patrician Republic of Rome to the communist republics of the 20th century. Plato himself wrote of 5 distinct forms of Republican government.
We are a, Constitutionally Federated Democratic Republic. The democratic process is CENTRAL to our form of republican government, and in casual speech, it's every bit as accuate/innaccurate to call the USA a democracy as it is a republic.
As political scientist Judith Best notes, the electoral-vote system, in combination with the winner-take-all allocation used by nearly every state, creates a distribution condition..."
True but I don't think that was the reason for the electoral college. The electoral college is composed of representatives of the State legislatures, and was established to insure that presidents would be responsive to the concerns of the States (as opposed to the people as a mass.)
It is a pillar of federalism and reflects the importance the Founders attached to the States, and the need to give States counterbalancing power versus the central government
In short, the President is to be elected by the State legislatures, not the "people."
Only Massachusetts Kennedys should be allowed to vote, and their opinions should be forced down the throat of the rest of us.
Very bad idea.
That is a big pet peeve of mine as well.
The campaigns would center on a handful of high-population states. Very, very bad idea.
What about the 17th and 19th?
And, since the 'retro' world would have to sign away the only mechanism that keeps them from being choked off by the 'metro' interests, it'll never happen. Iowa and the like will not support the Constitutional Amendment that would be required to do away with the Electoral College. VS.
I thank the founding fathers for NOT making us a pure Democracy, so that the "Boobouisie" doesn't vote our rights away.
"What about the 17th and 19th?"
We would be far better off if all of them after the 10th were voided.
Speaking from my little seven acres in the south.....No!
We should abandon, New York, LA, San Francisco, Massachusetts, District of Columbia, United Nations, Yasshar Arafat, France, Democractic Party Bill& Hillary, Jimmy Carter,______ ______ _______ _______ Etc. fill in the blanks.
With some states spliting their electoral college votes, we should figure a way of making them put it back to the origial for federal elections.
The electoral college is an idea whose idea has come and gone...one man. one vote. Ok, so the folks in missouri and Ohio will see lots of Bush/Kerry...the folks in NY, Texas,
California are written off.
Don't you find it strange that the Dems, who lost the election because of this archaic farce, aren't asking for an amendment to get rid of it?
The best argument ever for the Electoral College:
A pure democracy is something else entirely.
The Electoral College was put in place by the Founding Fathers of this nation. The Founding Fathers knew better than any politician today. We had best leave the Electoral College as it is.
Of course, it's relatively advantageous to the OTHER states....heh heh heh.
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