Posted on 06/01/2005 9:24:39 AM PDT by CHARLITE
There is much hand-wringing now in Washington about the inability of Republicans and Democrats to compromise even on seemingly unimportant issues. I think it is the inevitable result of long-term trends going back 100 years. The movement started in 1913 with the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. This requires election of senators by popular vote. As provided by the Founding Fathers, senators previously were elected by state legislatures. Before the 17th Amendment, senators represented states as states. This made the states much more significant players in national politics -- collectively coequal to the national government in our federal system. But when senators became popularly elected, the states lost any real influence in Washington. Senators stopped representing their states as states and simply became super-congressman.
The effect of this fundamental constitutional change was not apparent for a long time, and in many ways we are still seeing the consequences play out. One reason is that senators from the Deep South retained a pre-1913 attitude long afterward. For cultural and historical reasons, the term "states rights" had real meaning in the states of the Confederacy. Unfortunately, the term became widely viewed as a code word for racism and therefore discredited as a valid constitutional principle.
Northern Democrats were embarrassed by their Southern contingent, and Southern Democrats seeking national office -- such as Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- quickly adopted Northern attitudes to distance themselves from their roots.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I've always thought the 17th Amendment was a virtually unnoticed seismic shift in American politics.
Good! They need to be defeated, not dealt with.
Repeal the 17th Amendment.
The thing that led to the stampede of Democrats switching parties was when they realized that they could become Republicans without having to give up their big government, big spending, pork-barrel policies.
The words "states rights" do not appear anywhere in the US Constitution. A detail that was noted in the Bush Justice Depts. opinion on the individual rights meaning of the 2nd. Amendment. The opinion noted that the Founding Fathers used the term "rights" in regard to people or persons and "powers" when referring to states or the federal government.
As conservatives, it's to our advantage that we disabuse ourselves of the states rights concept. It is just as much an oxymoron as "collective rights" and, in reality, just as Left Wing. Rights belong to the people and the powers of government are the peoples right to grant or deny. Rights are never "zero sum", powers always are.
The Whigs were of little consequence because they bought into the Democrats' playbook, namely to reward your constituents with money (tariffs, internal improvements, and banks) without addressing the central issue of principle at the time, slavery.
Only when the Republicans came along did you get a party that elevated principle (slavery is bad, no slavery in the territories) to the highest point in a party platform, overriding money. (That certainly doesn't mean that the Republicans did not give out spoils; it does mean that their primary political position was one of principle).
What we have seen---and I don't pretend to know exactly why it occurred, but the 17th Amendment is unconvincing---that the Dems' appeal to money over principle has fallen apart. They have nothing left to appeal to, which is why they are losing . . . and why they are lost.
As do I.
It happened long before I was born, and yet I learned that the Senate represented states, and were chosen by their legislatures, although that had not been the case for decades.
When I grasped the reality upon approaching adulthood, first I was pissed; then I asked "Why?"
I have been asking ever since.
Stupid, stupid move.
The problem is, we seem to have less and less ideological partisanship and more and more party warfare. If we control both houses and the executive, why the hell do we have a budget deficit?
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
And (this is not popular around here), the fact is that the country is not quite as conservative as the election results show. I think the U.S. is fundamentally (55%) conservative, 20% liberal, and 25% "moderate" but to get legislation/judges through, you really need 61 of the Senators so that there can be deserters on any given issue for local election reasons. We're close.
They sold their soul to support Bill Clinton. First, he crystallized their fall, then he vulcanized it.
When you do something dead wrong and know it, you can only do two things: own up to it, admit your error, and make it right; or dig in your heels and redouble your efforts, making the situation worse and worse.
Guess which they've done?
Yes, I know about the 10th. I don't interpret its wording as affirming any notion of such an animal as "states rights", but rather the denial of further "powers" by the federal government.
I have found it to be an uphill battle to get fellow conservatives to separate the concepts of powers and rights. Many have heard the terms "states rights" for many years, yet have not considered that the consequences of actually conferring a "right" upon a government entity is making the state totalitarian. I believe, that in the end, the differences between the two political concepts, rights and powers, must occur or we are doomed to surrender our rights, in their entirety, to government. A good example is my state of California. It's legislature believes that it has "rights" and consequently denies some basic Constitutional rights to its citizens because the state believes it has the right to do so when it actually lacks the power. It's a paradox. The more "blue" a state is, the more "rights" it's politicians think the state has. And these states rights aren't good for the freedom and welfare of the states residents.
The Feds and the States have powers that we have conferred upon them, we will always have the right to deny them any power. However, when does a "right" trump another "right"?
Word play? Semantics? Possibly. It depends on where one is coming from. Since it's actually the lawyers that rule in this country and lawyers use the technicalities of words, it's time we exercised our rights to define these terms to the benefit of our freedom.
For some further insight refer to the Bush Justice Dept. opinion on the meaning of the Second Amendment.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Notice again here the uses of the words "rights" and "powers."
-PJ
-PJ
HALLELUJAH BROTHER! YOU GOT IT!
I do believe that the Founding Fathers found that the most brutal tyrants of history always claimed some "Divine Right" (states rights) to justify the injustices that they inflicted upon their people and victims. The FF's realized this opportunity for abuse and denied any State any divine recognition. Only the people and persons have the divine powers that they so knowingly termed as rights.
**- The states ARE the people.. you are not a United States citizen you are the citizen of a state.. The United States HAS no citizens.. LEGALLY.. The federal government is a mental construct.. The states are tangible assets.. The federal gov't is a state of mind.. and intangible.. except for Washington D.C..
The coup d'etat morphing the U.S. into a democracy has reversed this situation.. The states are now vassals of the Fed. instead of the other way around.. The Fed. was designed to be arbiter between states(only in some matters) not their virtual BOSS...
To wit; the U.S. is now a democracy instead of a republic displaying vestigial clues that it once WAS a republic.. AND most of the public don't even know or care that the Coup D'etat HAPPENED at all.. Thats why most americans "think" the U.S. is a democracy, and they would CORRECT.. and have no idea, or even a clue of what they were ROBBED OF..
The original republic has been stolen and all the parsing by lawyers cannot hide that fact.. except to the confused and ignorant rubes produced by public federally controlled schools, ON PURPOSE... It was NOT an accident.. or willy nilly political experimentation..
A Free Republic is be re-created, NOT KEPT from difilement because thats already happened.. We are a democracy.. NOT a republic.. except vestigially..
There is a lot of truth in this; - quite a profound insight on your part, Non-Sequitur. I'm thinking that this party change is where and how the spending appetite entered our party.
Thanks for your cogent remarks.
Char :)
In the 10th., reference is made to the states only in the context of powers, not "rights". Only the the people have the political capacity to posses both rights and powers.
If you want to argue for the concept of "states rights", than you have sided with the concept of the Divine Rights of Kings or the right of the state, be it federal or otherwise, to have powers over you that you cannot refuse. That's how one turns a republic into a democracy.
As for the rest of your post, I agree.
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