Posted on 06/14/2014 2:02:26 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Excellent object lesson: politicians are almost by definition interested mainly in preserving the club membership. C.S. Lewis’ essay, The Inner Ring, beautifully illustrates what is and what ought to be in this arena.
Nonsense.
I go over that in my post.
While the analyses is most astuit = and most likely correct, the solution is a political problem we are unlikely to solve.
We must convince our people of this case before moving upon it. I don’t see how that can be done within so sort a time with in the present mob rule that is tearing upon our union, our culture, our economy, and ultimately our civilization.
We have in the political world today people so uncivilized that they viciously attack and ostracize people simply for holding views long felt acceptable and decent and demanded by their religious believe.
That is not the foundation for civil order and peace, that is the foundation for Civil War. As the very foundation of our faith is tested we cannot fold, and as the very foundation of the radical and culturally intolerant ideology wages war upon our existences we cannot for theses many years they have left have peace.
We can only take solid in the fact that ultimately our enemy cannot sustain themselves except by conversion of the faithful. IF we and our kin remain committed to biblical teaching they who no longer embrace having kids at all will die out. But it will likely take many generations.
The only alternative for both this problem and the problem of the basic structural problem of our no longer Constitutional Government is a cultural renisants brought forth by this revilation.
Even as weak as we are, if we remain resolute and committed to the Teaching of God, unwavering in our commitment to liberty. the Nieves people will see the ciaos of their ways and slowly come to join us for the stability and true love life needs.
Maybe this (repeal of 17 th Amendment) is the issue we should be seeking to address rather than a “Con Con” or an Article V. Properly articulated, this could appeal to a wide majority, and therefore, State legislatures.
There is no reason why a state couldn’t require that Senatorial candidates be chosen by their state legislatures and then placed before the citizens for the popular election. This would solve the problem without the need to repeal the 17th.
I can make that argument about Senate representation because Article V explicitly addresses it. It does not address slavery or gun ownership. It says “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate”. I’m suggesting “equal suffrage in” means voting representation in, “consent” means ratification, and “state” means state legislature. Is this such a stretch?
Of course there would...
Do you believe that a conservative, rural voter has as much representation as a liberal city dweller?
I can go to the polls and choose my rep who will choose my Senator... I know where he lives & works... I also know that he will choose someone to represent HIS interests as well...
Vicious ideologues would be few & far between...
Chart found at http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3167436/posts?page=10#10
Still, if the constitution acts as it does, directly on the states, they should be in Congress without input from the people.
Consent of the Governed.
Perhaps, so. But Messrs. Dewhurst, Bennett and Cochran would have been charged with protecting the interests of their states (and its people) against the federal government.
As a consequence, the federal Leviathan might be significantly smaller than it is today.
And that would be an outcome you'd favor, wouldn't it?
Those voices questioning the dominance of Washington did not begin to find a voice until the austerity implemented by the Harding and Coolidge administrations following World War I when Washington was faced with the once unimaginable $6 billion federal debt, and before this the first Senate rejection of a negotiated treaty, the League of Nations. The 17th Amendment was ratified amidst the fog of such a time.
At that moment in our history Progressivism and what Wilson called "Americanism" were difficult to distinguish. "Federalism" as Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan eventually understood it had no Party.
All of this is sketched out in very broad strokes, of course, as none of it was anything like that simple.
Coolidge, who originally embraced progressivism, perhaps unwittingly challenged its central planks as Massachusetts' governor when he fired the Boston police strikers, as Wilson issued uncertain statements pushing the League out west, in the year before the GOP convention in 1920 literally demanded his nomination for Vice President.
Back to the present... one of the best arguments I've heard put forth in favor of the 17th amendment's repeal cites the almost invisibility of the state legislatures. Perhaps the People and their media outlets would pay much more needed attention to the shenanigans happening in their state capitals if their legislatures picked Senators and had, also, the power to recall them!
You have provided an excellent summary of the current situation. People are getting sick of our national legislature and maybe we’re getting close to making some fundamental changes in the way it operates.
“Oh, no doubt. The average American can’t see beyond democracy, as if popular elections themselves are the purpose of government.”
You will find pleantly of those in Saddam’s Iraq and the Ayatollah’s Iran,just as you will find plenty of those in America’s future electing the same group of dictators over and over again.
Everything you cite was in Article I. It is wrong to attribute those characteristics to the 17th amendment.
-PJ
Prior to the 17th, although there wasn't an explicit recall power, there was a de facto recall power in that the state legislature could refuse to send the Senator back. The intent was that the state legislature, sensitive to the feelings of the people, would preserve their own positions by sending someone to Congress who was acceptable to the people or face their own electoral loss.
Today, it is almost impossible to replace a Senator. Only death in office or the most extreme of scandals creates a vacancy these days.
-PJ
"Equal Suffrage" means equal representation, and the 17th amendment did not change that. It only changed the method of choosing Senators, not the number of them per state.
-PJ
The Constitution is a tapestry, where if you pull one thread out the whole thing begins to unravel.
You are correct that the Senate represented the states and the House represented the people of the states - in the federal government. But the people are also represented by the state legislatures, too, so the people are doubly represented.
The Constitution relied on the state legislatures to be the body that was closest to the people, which is why the 9th and 10th amendments are so important. It reinforces the expectation that most of the governing of the people would be done by the state legislatures, and that the federal government would be free to focus on international relations on behalf of all of the states, and on disputes between the states.
Today, the federal government is usurping more and more territory that had been the domain of the states. The federal government is mandating over the people food choices, health choices, education choices, housing choices, business choices, family choices, recreational choices, religious choices, transportation choices, property choices, and more.
This is because the 17th amendment removed the firewall that separated the states and the federal government, and that resulted in the federal government running wild without nothing to contain it.
-PJ
LOL. That is a bit of statist political sophistry. The question is not how many Senators constitute equal suffrage. The question is who gets to pick them. In article V the word "state" does not mean the demos of the state. It means the same thing that the word "state" means everywhere else in the constitution. It means the state legislatures.
Where did you read that suffrage means representation? It doesn't. Suffrage means the right to vote.
suffrage (ˈsʌfrɪdʒ) n
1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the right to vote, esp in public elections; franchise
2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the exercise of such a right; casting a vote
3. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a supporting vote
4. (Ecclesiastical Terms) a prayer, esp a short intercessory prayer
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