Posted on 06/14/2014 2:02:26 AM PDT by Jacquerie
From Charles de Montesquieu Spirit of the Laws, “When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils, but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles.”
There is a fundamental contradiction in the structure of our government that is responsible for the increasing turmoil we’ve witnessed these past few years. Media pleas to “get along” and compromise reflect snowballing social and political tensions.
Unimaginable only a decade ago, our rulers in Washington, DC prepare for societal collapse. Rather than deal with the sickness that afflicts our republic, they respond to the symptoms, through billion round ammo purchases, and administrative agency task forces to investigate, stymie, and prosecute political opponents.
Like a steam boiler with a disabled governor, the building pressure in a deeply divided American society threatens to blow up in racial, economic or police state violence. We see the collapse of society and free government all around and wonder what exactly happened, and what we can do about it.
The source of our long term ailment is simple to diagnose.
Definition: In free government, the institutions upon which the constitution acts have representation in the government. The Framing generation knew this as Consent of the Governed. We must restore this maxim before it is too late.
In the American system, any proposed law that could garner the support of the House of Representatives and a Senate of the States was likely to be acceptable to the people and the states at large. This embrace of both the people and the states into our government served to reduce the possibility of infighting and social disorders among a more or less homogenous people.
The concept of free government wasn’t new in 1787. It is as old as the ancient Greek city-states in which the people participated directly in a government that acted on them. Likewise in the Roman republic, where patricians and plebs alike participated. Under the British system, the whole of society, the commons, lords and king had their place in legislation. Our very own Articles of Confederation constituted free government because the institution which the government acted upon, the states, had representation in the government. Notice the people were not represented under the Articles of Confederation. It wasn’t necessary because the government did not act on the people.
Thus, in broad terms, these free government designs were/are stable systems, for no group was empowered to dominate and oppress another by virtue of the absence of that group from the government. Consent of the Governed.
That changed horribly in 1913. For the first time in history, an institution that had a legitimate and necessary place in free government, the states, walked away and subjected themselves to the caprice of the people. With passage of the 17th Amendment, the United States was transformed overnight from a federal republic into a large, unwieldy democratic republic that held arbitrary power over the states. While the Constitution still acted on the states through numerous clauses, the states were not represented. Despite popular representation in the House and Senate, free government for the states and the people they protected was gone. Not Consent of the Governed.
Booting the states from our system of government makes as much sense as booting the people. It makes no sense.
In order to remain a free government with passage of the 17th, every clause in the constitution that affected the states should have been repealed. That’s right, every one. The states were no longer represented, and therefore the government had no legitimate power over them. Passage of the 17th left behind a federal constitution without federalism.
The cynic would immediately point out that removing these clauses is impossible. The people, states, and the government they created are intertwined in their duties, functions and responsibilities. That is correct. Remove all of the clauses that affect the states and the remaining contradictions would likely lead to violence and dissolution. IOW, what we face today.
The 17th Amendment was a blind alley to arbitrary, despotic government. Republican freedom cannot be restored until it is repealed. Consent of the Governed. Article V to restore our federal republic.
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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