Posted on 05/03/2010 6:15:04 AM PDT by Pharmboy
THE American public is not pleased with Congress — one recent poll shows that less than a third of all voters are eager to support their representative in November. “I am not really happy right now with anybody,” a woman from Decatur, Ill., recently told a Washington Post reporter. As she considered the prospect of a government composed of fledgling lawmakers, she noted: “When the country was founded, those guys were all pretty new at it. How bad could it be?”
Actually, our founders were not all that new at it: the men who led the revolution against the British crown and created our political institutions were very used to governing themselves. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams and John Adams were all members of their respective Colonial legislatures several years before the Declaration of Independence.
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If one wanted to explain why the French Revolution spiraled out of control into violence and dictatorship and the American Revolution did not, there is no better answer than the fact that the Americans were used to governing themselves and the French were not.
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“A long continuance in the first executive departments of power or trust is dangerous to liberty,” declared the Maryland Constitution. “A rotation, therefore, in those departments is one of the best securities of permanent freedom.” In addition to specifying term limits for its plural executive, the radical Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 likewise required that after four annual terms even the assemblymen would have to give way to a new set of legislators so they would “return to mix with the mass of the people and feel at their leisure the effects of the laws which they have made.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yes, I honestly do believe that! As a matter of fact, there are PLENTY of documents out there about Constitutional Conventions wherein they argued this exact point. As a Representative Republic, it is our duty to have our Representatives speak for us. How can one man or woman represent 700,000 citizens?
Also, if you read the actual article, it states that the initial enumeration would be 30,000 until the number of Representatives reached 200, then it would go to 40,000. After the number of Representatives reached 300, the number would go to and stay at 50,000. Madison intended the number to stay at 50,000, and yes, we would have roughly 6,000 Representatives at this point. I would be completely fine with that!
Imagine how easy it would be to canvass a few dozen neighborhoods to campaign for office instead of a few dozen counties. This is the true essence of Representative Republicanism!
Madison discussed this in depth in The Federalist Papers, and it’s obvious that they intended this article to be ratified. They were short by 2 states for ratification.
Perhaps the House should look like the senate in Star Wars...
10,268.....
Sounds good to me. They can meet electronically from their districts...will not be as easily or anonymously subject to the K St lobbying industry...and by virtue of sheer numbers..any consensus generated will assure that only issues of significant importance to the United States will receive their attention. The Spotted Owl will not be one of them
I agree with Prof. Wood, but for the fact that Washington, Franklin, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, et al. were all both experienced in colonial politics, AND exceptionally well read, well educated (and HONORABLE) men, the founding of America would have been impossible.
The “dump all the bums out” mentality is just wrong headed and naive.... as there is NO guarantee at all the new boss won’t be just as greedy and power-mad as the old—just MORE reckless, with less finesse and wisdom.
The problem is not that innocents get corrupted by power—the problem is, we need mature good men (and women) in power who will be tested and uncorruptable. Throw all the “bums” out, and you throw out a lot of babies with that dirty bathwater...
Yes we should throw the bums out....but ONLY the bums. To do otherwise is just stupid and unwise, and a way to guarantee a new generation of bums will prevail.
In a sense, President Obama himself—a junior senator, with zero experience before, is a product of the “throw the bums out” mentality, just on the Left... and look how much trouble he is getting us in...
What about the ratio of lower house to upper house?
When the Founders were alive, it would have been at most 4:1, they could not have anticipated even a 600:1 ratio. The power given to Senators in that type of setting could not have been imagined by them.
One thing to keep in mind in your discussion, is that a Senator is a very different animal today than the Constitution intended. Senators, in our system, are supposed to represent the State Legislatures from which they come—and the original Constitution had them appointed by the States....which meant (in theory anyway) that the duly elected State representatives—closest to the people, closer, even than US Representatives, had their man in the Senate.
When the Constitution was amended, allowing for Senators to be popularly elected in their states, this made them independent from their State legislatures—leaving no formal representation of the States in the federal Congress. This, I believe, assured federal governmental supremacy over the States—by removing an essential check on federal power.
Senators now are like preening would-be governors—and they are too often not really representative of their States and their states interests...only their own populist-based power interests.
The House was supposed to be representative of the population of the country.
Also, keep in mind that the passage of the 17th Amendment took away the ability for the States to control their representation in the Senate. Popular votes were supposed to be kept to the House, the largest of the legislative branches.
Under no circumstances was the Senate intended to represent the plurality of the people. They were supposed to be, essentially, delegates from the States.
The resistance by the mentioned groups could be insurmountable.
But I do believe, in the current environment, the states are getting fed up with the relentless DC power grab and would definitely be the only road to that massive of a change.
I especially like the idea of regionalizing the federal government.
Decentralizing = reduced influence of pesky "activists".
There are better answers. The French Revolution attacked the church; the American was incubated in the churches. The French was supported by an debased, elite which produced nothing allied with an underclass which had nothing. The American revolt was supported by farmers, merchants and mechanics.
Great points...the French went after the middle class in their Revolution, didn’t they?
I believe the US could be broken into 6 Federal Districts:
The District of Columbia representing the Northeast
The District of [the Southeast] likely to be housed in Atlanta or some other major city in the SE
The District of [the upper midwest] likely to be housed in Chicago, Des Moines, or Minneapolic
The District of [the lower midwest] most likely in Texas
The District of [the southwest] likely in Phoenix, L.A., or Salt Lake City
And the District of [the northwest] likely in Seattle, Boise, or Portland
Regionalized Federal government would mean greater ability for the masses to show up to rallies and make a difference in the governing of this country. I read this site and this article and immediately thought, “This needs to be law!”
My point is that Madison could never had imagined a country that had 308,000,000 people on it.
The population of the world in 1800 was around 978,000,000.
The population of the 16 States in 1800 was 5,200,000.
By the time the max number of 50,000 per 1 rep was reached by Madison’s math, there would be 15,000,000 citizens. That was hit by the 1840 census.
To triple in size, it took 40 years. It took another 40 years to triple again (49+ million in the 1880 census), which would have been 980 representatives.
The is no way that Madison could have envisioned 1000 members of the House a mere 100 years after the establishment of the Contitution.
Actually, several members of the Constitutional delegation realized this would be the case and saw this as an eventual fact. They didn’t deal with the ramifications, because, keep in mind, at that time, we also only settled the east coast of the country. Of course they couldn’t have imagined the eventual size of the country, but that’s the brilliance of our Founding fathers. They gave us laws under which we are to abide, and if we have to make concessions or changes in order to make it work, then so be it.
How many “Representatives” are there in the EU delegation? Surely a nation of that size would have a large number of representatives?
Yup. Set the stage for the never-ending attack by lefists on the bourgeoisie, the petit-bourgeoisie, the kulak, the middle class. We can even see it in America at the sneers liberals direct toward 1950s sitcoms. Obvious in the Obama regime too. His coalition is very similar to that which brought down France. Debased, immoral intellectuals who had seized the Academies allied with financial predators and an ignorant, often criminal, underclass.
The French wiped out all the mediating forces between the state and the individual as well. After the French Revolution, there was nothing between Jacques and the state. He answered, at the end, to Napoleon. That change allowed states to maintain standing armies—something difficult in the medieval era.
Americans after our revoltion still had a maze of obligations—to their family, to their church, to civic groups, to their local and state governments.
The European Parliament has 736 members, representing 27 Nations.
Double that to get up to ~50 “states” and you’d have 1500 members. That’s not the 6,000 we’d have, but isn’t that what makes America great?
I just did the math. Our 435 Reps for 309 million is 1 rep per 710,000 persons. Their 736 for 501 million is 1 rep per 680,000 persons.
Pretty close level of representation.
I don’t want to compare us to the EU, Anitius. It’s appalling that 1 person represents 700,000 people. How could that one person possibly represent the affairs and views of 700,000 people?
Public Law 62-5 established the House at 435. With Alaska and Hawaii coming into the mix, the number went up to 437, but it was brought back down to 435 after 1962. Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you? I would rather the number of Representatives increase as does our population. That would give a LOT more creedence to the census when it comes around every 10 years, IMHO.
How could that one person possibly represent the affairs and views of 30,000 people?
How could that one person possibly represent the affairs and views of 10,000 people?
How could that one person possibly represent the affairs and views of 1,000 people?
I suppose our disparity lies in our definition of representation. The Founders would have never intended that every individual speak on the floor of the House, but I doubt they would’ve condoned one Representative for 700,000 either. I believe that all politics are local, and under our current configuration, my “local” Congressman might be from several counties away or they might be from my own backyard.
Under article the first, we would be guaranteed representation from someone who’s literally from our hometown, and in my opinion, that ranks higher than their NRA rating or whether or not they’re pro-life.
Smaller communities make decisions that benefit the majority of the community. By regionalizing representation, we are giving away our freedoms to people who may or may not represent us in the way our community does the same.
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