Free Republic

It’s called “democracy.” It may be surprising to us, but there have been thinkersdown through history who didn’t believe democracy is the optimal system of government. Here is a quotation from one of them: “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would...

Despite our best efforts, we occasionally stumble along the way of life. On the discovery of our mistakes, we correct them, learn, move on, and hopefully avoid repetition. As our capacity to learn improves with age, we learn from the mistakes of others as well. But, perhaps the wisest among us learn from the successes of others. To avoid as many of life’s natural pitfalls as possible, pay attention to the examples of the successful, good, and virtuous. That which applies to our personal lives extends to society and that expression of society, republican government. Few republican governments of any...

From the moment of our independence, the first question as posited by Mercy Warren was “what government consistent with the Declaration of Independence can be designed by men too proud for monarchy, too poor for nobility, and it is to be feared, too selfish and avaricious for a virtuous republic?” Republicanism was in our blood. Despite the efforts of the British Crown all of the states had evolved from quasi-republican colonies. There was no other choice. The challenge was how to secure republican liberty in a society composed of normal, often selfish people. For Mercy Warren, the answer was found...

Progressives Blow Up the Framers’ Constitution.Despite the lessons of history, Progressives promote ever more democracy, which, unless tempered and limited, is like turning one’s household over to the majority rule of teenagers. Is this household arrangement fair? Sure. It is also idiocy which no parent would consider. A senate of the states and not the parchment barriers of the Constitution stood athwart democratic rule by social justice emotions little different from those of the typical teenager.What was the 17th Amendment (17A) supposed to do? The post-17A senate was to respond to the people’s needs and free the senate from corruption...

Progressives Blow Up the Framers’ Constitution.There is no correlation between majoritarian rule and free government. Our Framers wisely limited the democratic element to just one half of one of the three branches of government. The House of Representatives satisfies the Founders self-evident truth that just governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. The previous squibs in this series illustrated two recurring themes surrounding the senate debates at the 1787 federal convention. First, the senate should counter the democratic excesses of the people in the house. In Madison’s words, the senate must be structured to reflect “more coolness”...

We often hear about the United States having a “republican form of government.” That comes directly from Article IV, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution, which emphatically proclaims: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The ultra-conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to make a slight variation in that language. That is, to impose a Republican government on the country by allowing state legislatures to set election rules on their own, without any pesky interference by their governors or state courts. The Supreme Court will hear arguments later...

There have been many details exposed over the last two years about how our government at all levels is not what we thought it was, and none of what we're hearing bodes well for this republic. Let's focus on one issue: the U.S. Senate. It's clearer than it has ever been that it's just a collection of elected officials, behaving as if they're independent actors with no restraint. It's as if they have no allegiance to anyone. The citizens of their respective states matter not, except once every six years, when they play the "how can I fool them again"...

Longtime Washington Post columnist George Will says the Constitution should be amended to bar senators from running for president, specifically pointing to Sen. Josh Hawley. “The 328 senators of the previous 50 years have illustrated the tyranny of the bell-shaped curve: a few of them dreadful, a few excellent, most mediocre,” Will wrote in the Post on Wednesday. “Although Josh Hawley, Missouri’s freshman Republican, might not be worse than all the other 327, he exemplifies the worst about would-be presidents incubated in the Senate.”

While political parties ideally represent the common interests of their members, a contradiction has developed within the GOP over the past twenty years. Leadership and rank-and-file members work toward irreconcilable ends: the retention of power, wealth and status at any cost on the one hand, and change that restores economic prosperity and social cohesion on the other. For years, GOP leadership worked handily with democrat leaders Obama, Pelosi, Reid. Behind closed doors, this common senior leadership develops many thousand page omnibus spending bills. In turn, these assaults on the traditional appropriations process are presented to a membership that is cajoled...

Levin’s book burst on the conservative scene in the summer of 2013.Rush and Hannity gave it two big thumbs up as it climbed the NYT bestseller list. He offered eleven amendments as a starting point, the place from which a sovereign people may once again reassert free government.What ails the American republic is beyond the reach of elections in general, and presidential elections in particular. Governmental operations have become cloistered, deliberately concealed, and unaccountable.[1] They confound the citizen and the citizens’ representatives sent to make the law on their behalf.The solution is to restore the separation of powers. As every...

From Charles de Montesquieu’s 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 decades. 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...

As opposed to what the Left believes, the purpose of government is not to impose social justice. That was forgotten in Scotus’ 1964 Reynolds v. Sims ruling. Citing a non-existent “one man one vote” principle, eight Warren Court black-robes ruled that state legislative districts must be of approximately equal populations. Through a rogue interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, these masterminds imposed a democratic republic form of government on all fifty states! Never mind the constitution simply guarantees a republican form of government. Scotus illegally overruled centuries of wisdom and imposed social justice democracy instead. Free government demands...

Conservatives tout the importance of the traditional family to our society. Father, mother, children, the family is the building block, the foundation of society. This isn’t news to any civilization. Radical Leftists tell us it doesn’t matter. A family is whatever one or two or more people of any sex wish it to be. After almost fifty years of the Great Society, in which many fathers were replaced with a monthly stipend, we know the results. Directionless, violent and barbaric boys grow into felonious men. Absent the proven institution, the structure of traditional marriage, women still have babies, but our...

Such is the GOP elite’s fear of Trump that some would rather deal with the loathsome and high criminal Hillary Clinton as president. This alone is proof enough of the existence of a single political party, albeit with two wings, left and right. I don’t recall who was the first to use the term “Uniparty,” but it is certainly accurate.Political parties traditionally represent the common interests of their members, and to this end the two wings of the Uniparty have far more in common than differences. Their rhetoric often contrasts, but their mutual interests are on display. Witness the sixth...

Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution in an op-ed published Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal. Proposed in 1912 and ratified by 36 state legislatures on April 8, 1913, the amendment required U.S. senators to be elected by popular votes in each state. Prior to its enactment, Article I of the Constitution mandated that each state legislature vote to send two senators to Washington. Sasse’s op-ed, titled, “Make the Senate Great Again,” suggested several Senate reforms “aimed at promoting debate, not ending it.” “What would the Founding Fathers...

Subtitle: The Insidious 17th Amendment. The 17th Amendment did to federalism what the 13th Amendment did to slavery. Both are long-gone vestiges of our framing era. Tenth Amendment? States’ rights? Poof, and not only long-gone but neither slavery nor federalism can possibly return without repeal of their respective amendments. Conservatives would do well to consider the 13th – 15th Amendments. Beginning with freeing slaves, then prohibiting state violations of privileges or immunities, securing due process, equal protection and entitling blacks to vote, the post-civil war amendments fundamentally altered society and the federal/state government relationship. Unlike the pre-civil war Constitution, the...

Reflections on the anniversary of the Seventeenth Amendment “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.” - Constitution of the United States of America, Article 1, Section 3 And so it was, for about 124 years, from the implementation of the Constitution in 1789 through the implementation of Amendment XVII, on April 8, 1913. With the Seventeenth Amendment, the progressive era reached its pinnacle. Direct election of United States Senators forever severed the tethers by which the state...

States as states do need representation in the federal government. Under the Constitution, they have far too much. The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court spurred a lively discussion about institutional design. After the vote, some noted that the 50 senators who voted to confirm represent about 45 percent of the population. A number of astute constitutional historians quickly spoke up to point out that of course that happens, because the Senate represents states and not people. If you want to see the people represented, look to the House. But of course, the fact that the Constitution does...

Subtitle: Conclusions of Jay S. Bybee - Ulysses at the Mast. Bybee’s 1997 work was my first scholarly exposure to the 17th Amendment. Bybee opened my eyes to the central and indispensable place a Senate of the States held in our Framers’ system. Failed democratic republics litter history, and as Western democracies today fail in their first purpose, defense of their borders and culture, we may find James Madison prescient when he warned that “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security of the rights of property; and have in general...

Trump got you down? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez giving you the willies? Try federalism — now with 70 percent less authoritarianism. To the uninitiated, conservatives sometimes sound — to put it plainly — bonkers. Your lefty friends are going on and on about free health care and making Jeff Bezos pay off their student loans, and conservatives are talking about . . . the 17th Amendment. Conservatives do hate the 17th Amendment. That’s the one that instituted the direct election of senators, which basically turned the upper house into a puffed-up House of Representatives with a bit less accountability. Conservatives of a...