Posted on 02/18/2015 3:14:56 AM PST by Jacquerie
The accepted dogma among many conservatives is that the way to save what remains of our republic is to vote conservative, constitutionalist, virtuous men and women into office. History shows that to be a blind alley, a dead end that occupies many minds, all the while evil men get away with high crimes.
It’s a pity that electoral history going back decades have failed to disprove their belief. Most of the conservative candidates we send to congress go wobbly, rino or worse. Meanwhile, no congressional rats ever turn conservative.
Clearly, there is something outside the power of personal character and public virtue that has soured the world’s sweetest experiment in liberty.
The Framers weren’t the first to figure out that the key to liberty was division of power. By 1787, that concept, which is largely forgotten today, was actually old hat.
In 1513, a far lesser known influence on our framing generation began a review of the Roman Republic. Drawing chiefly from Livy’s Histories, Niccolo’ Machiavelli took a fresh look at old models. What he drew as Roman lessons for his contemporary republic of Florence, the maxims therein were well known to our Framers and certainly apply today.
From his Discourses on Livy, of fundamental importance to any republic is a government that “establishes in it to take for granted that all men are evil and that they will always act according to the wickedness of their nature whenever they have the opportunity.”
He drew from the experience of early Romans, whom he credited with regularly improving their republic. In general, it was the key to its longevity. In particular, the constant tension between the few and the many was finely tuned over the centuries. Plebs and nobles had their distinct powers, and when one overstepped its bounds, the other was ready to defend its political turf. Through regular improvements to their republic, Machiavelli described early republican Romans as being on the straight path which could lead them to perfection.
From his perspective, republican Rome’s four hundred year life was a successful quest in the achievement of government perfection.
When challenges arose, Rome didn’t revert to the ages old cycle of monarchy/despotism, followed by aristocracy/oligarchy, and finally republicanism blowing up into anarchy.
Consider similarities with the life-cycle of the American Republic. Like the Romans, we started off under monarchs. Upon independence, we established distinct democratic republics. Soon thereafter, a loose governing structure in the form of a state dominated, (federal) confederation proved strong enough to cast off the British yoke. When that structure proved insufficient to secure peacetime public happiness, the people accepted a new design of government in the form of our Constitution, in which the states thoroughly participated, yet they shared power with representatives of the people. As when Rome established Tribunes of the people, America also followed a straight path toward perfection when it included a House of Representatives in its legislative body.
Further improvements in the form of fine adjustments to the republic followed. These include:
1791. Ten Amendments which acknowledged some God-given and societal rights.
1865. An amendment that eliminated the British imposed institution of slavery.
1868. The 14th Amendment that reinforced personal and societal rights guaranteed in the Declaration and Bill of Rights.
Until 1913, Americans remained on the straight path which could lead them to perfection.
Instead of strengthening the republic in the face of societal and economic change, Americans betrayed themselves. Overnight they weakened the freedom enhancing structure of their government. With the 17th Amendment they tossed confederal government and embraced a democratic republic, which history has shown to be precursor to anarchy, followed by tyranny.
They cut and pasted an inferior popular form over a finely tuned freedom enhancing federal form. Without adjusting enumerated powers which were designed with the assumption that the states would forever participate in congress, America substituted freedom with democracy as it’s central tenet.
There isn’t much time to step back on the straight path to republican perfection. Obama is gathering despotic powers as quickly as he can. Little stands in his way.
Yet, we can avoid the historic cycle of despots, oligarchy, democracy, anarchy. Article V of the Constitution is there, it is within our grasp. We must take it, restore federalism, or join history’s long list of failed republics.
>> And yet you ignore the pressing need to abolish the 12th amendment and return things to the way the founder’s intended on that front. <<
Impy nailed it. If the anti-17thers REALLY wanted to "restore our Republic to how the founders envisioned it", they'd be posting just as many articles and comments constantly DEMANDING the 12th amendment be abolished and Mitt Romney become Obama's Vice President, since the founders envisioned that the second highest vote getter for President become Vice President. That was how it worked from the start, until the method of selecting the Vice President was CHANGED by CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT in 1804, and the new method of letting the candidates run as a team went AGAINST the method that the founders wanted.
Yet not a single person constantly SCREAMING about the method that the U.S. Senate is chosen seems to give a hoot about the method that the Vice President is choosen, or argues that letting the President pick his own Vice President has "destroyed our Republic"
Kinda like how the left loves to SCREAM that we MUST legalize gay marriage because its ALL about letting consenting adults marry whoever they "love", but not one of the pro-gay marriage loudmouths is also loudly DEMANDING that we let men marry their sisters.
Gotta love how they won't stand by their own arguments and standards.
Wrong. In my state (and numerous others), it would ENHANCE the urban vote.
Thanks to gerrymandering, Chicago makes up less than 25% of the population overall but controls half the state legislature seats. My state senate district is 80% suburban but the 20% of it in Chicago is overwhelmingly Dem (giving 95% of their votes to the RATS), and they choose our state senator for the REST of the district. On several occasions, the Republican candidate won narrowly in the suburban part of the district, only to lose district-wide because the small portion of the district in the city voted in huge numbers for the Democrat.
Yep, thanks to the evil method of letting we the people choose both houses, there is ZERO difference between representatives and senators from the same state. No doubt Congresswoman Shelia Jackson-Lee of Texas could be elected Senator Shelia Jackson-Lee of Texas any time she wanted, since Texas voters elect both her and Ted Cruz.
Repealing anything (17th) would be harder than passing legislation to force ID for voting..
OR means testing SSI recipients...
OR closing the federal academy of public school ruining...
OR some decent Tort Reform...
OR auditing the IRS... or prosecuting a TRAITOR.. any traitor.. even CALLING SOMEONE a traitor..
because treason is the NEW NORMAL...
It’s revolution or learn to be a slave..
America in Crisis
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iu92zs5gg2bwuy3/FIRE.avi?dl=0
Niccolo’ Machiavelli analyzed the structure of history’s longest lived republics, particularly Rome. They shared a common trait. Power wasn’t entrusted entirely to democratic institutions, but was divided among the one, the few and the many.
That is a much clearer-eyed view of politicians than what we see today on both the Right and the Left. Everybody's looking for a politican-hero to save us from whatever we view as impending calamity instead of realizing that the Rule of Law and the people's insistence that it be followed is what keeps politicians from straying too far.
Milton Friedman also had a clear-eyed view of politicians and the whole political process. I think his viewpoint is a little less disparaging than Machiavelli's of man's tendencies ("self-interest" rather than "evil" per se). He said,
[People] think that the way to solve things is to elect the right people. It’s nice to elect the right people but that isn’t the way you solve things. The way you solve things is to [establish a political climate of opinion which will] make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEVI3bmN8TI
Yes, “interest” is the term used by Framers as well.
Ah, cherry picking a small handful of politicians out of hundreds of names to prove your point. We can all play this game.
Do you thinking the Democrat selection of Aaron Burr, Benjamin Tillman, and William A. Clark, is to be preferred to the election of Bob Taft, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, etc.
Indeed. Power STILL isn't entrusted entirely to democratic institutions in the United States. It will be a cold day in before we are rid of activist federal judges that are appointed by politicians for life. Contrary to the anti-17thers claims that we are "in danger" of becoming a "direct democracy", most politicians would rather cut off their right arm before they let we the people vote out federal judges. We need more democracy in America, not less.
Well, all the electors would get 2 votes, so presuming all the rat electors voted for Obama and Biden, the House would have gotten to choose between them, as happened in 1800 when Jefferson and Burr tied.
“Team impeachment” might have gotten it’s wish, President Biden. ;p
Jefferson was only elected VP in 1796 because over 20 Federalist electors failed to vote for their party’s VP choice, Thomas Pinckney. Even though some Jefferson electors gave their 2nd votes to Pinckney in hopes he would beat out Adams for the top spot if the Federalists won, Pinckney still ended up in third place. The Federalists paid for their lack of party discipline, they should have all voted for Adams and all but 1 (designated to do so) for Pinckney. If only they had smartphones they could have coordinated that easily, but they managed to do it 4 years later in 1800, without smartphones. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (older brother of Thomas) was the VP choice and he got 1 less vote than Adams.
The failure to consider the 12th soon enough resulted in the happenings of 1800, when the old Republicans failed to have one of their electors not vote for Burr. The choice fell to the lame duck House (voting by state), which was controlled by the Federalists, most of whom logically backed Burr, who was more amiable to working with them than their hated foe Jefferson, but enough of them thought Burr was a scumbag that they voted for TJ and it was deadlocked until some people switched and Jefferson won.
And thus everyone was convinced the system was a cluster**** and passed the 12th.
But anyway, that illustrated how things don’t always work out how they are planned, so it’s a real GREAT thing that they made it possible to pass amendments. The founders were against the idea of political parties, but they quickly found their formation to be natural and unavoidable. Had they lived into the 20th Century I’m sure a great many of them would have found the 17th amendment a necessary revision (as corruption had made Senate elections a cluster***) and supported it’s ratification.
These anti-17thers must live in the same parallel universe where Newt Gingrich was doing a fantastic job as Speaker in 1998, until he was "removed" by a "RINO lead coup" (not to mention the Obamabots alternate reality where the recession is "over" thanks to Obama and there are "millions of new jobs" available now)
You might be interested in the Machiavel section of John Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions.
http://www.constitution.org/jadams/ja1_27.htm
Fatman, you aren't the same person to say this and you need to realize how very VERY stupid it sounds.
The primary difference between the House and Senate has ALWAYS been that the states have EQUAL VOTES in the Senate and the House is based on population. That's a 4000% times more important distinction than the manner of election.
-PJ
Meant to write “first person” not “same person”. Whoever the first person was to postulate that garbage argument was most certainly a mouth-breathing ninny.
No feminism, and no homos, Sulu is into chicks over there.
I don’t know about Sulu, but you can bet Kirk had that.
If that has actually become "accepted dogma," I am thankful. We're making progress.
History shows that to be a blind alley, a dead end that occupies many minds, all the while evil men get away with high crimes.
George Washington, and John Adams, and others, differ with you on this.
Washington:“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morals are INDISPENSABLE supports ... Let it simply be asked, 'Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths...?'"
Adams:
“Our Constitution was made ONLY for a moral and religious people”. It is WHOLLY inadequate to the government of any other.”
It’s a pity that electoral history going back decades have failed to disprove their belief. Most of the conservative candidates we send to congress go wobbly, rino or worse.
So, the solution is to do better job of vetting candidates to assure that they have the character to keep their oaths, not to presume that we can get good government out of unprincipled scoundrels, simply by means of a better political process of dividing power. One that we will never get, by the way, as long as the scoundrels are allowed to stay in power.
It all comes down to the character of those who take the oath.
There is ZERO doubt that Mirror Kirk did Mirror Uhura, or was just about to get around to it. ;)
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