Other recent articles under: 17th Amendment as of Sep 28, 2010
Topic: 17th Amendment
Restoring the Senate: Repealing Direct Election
While the 17th Amendment at face value appears to be a good thing, in actuality it makes Senators less accountable to their home states (and the citizens therein), which they are in Washington to serve the interests of. by Alexander Massa
(libertarian)
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Senators were never meant to be elected by the people. While that may seem like an un-democratic sentiment, it is nothing more than pure fact, based upon the original, un-amended Constitution written and made law of the land by our Founding Fathers. However, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified and in force as of April 8, 1913, changed all of that - and not for the better. It took power away from the state legislatures and handed it over to the people, stripping states of their right to choose their Senators. The whole point of the bicameral legislature, by and large, was defeated by this Amendment. The Senate was meant to be a place of calm and logic; a place where radical bills passed by hot-heads in the House could be tempered and toned down (which also happens naturally in time; the legislative process is by no means a short or quick one).
However, once the people were able to elect their Senators as well as their House Representatives, the same type of men infiltrated the Senate chamber - demagogues who preyed on emotion and fleeting sentiments; men who did not always apply logic or fact to the political debate at hand (something that is still seen to a large extent today, i.e. the ridiculous yet widespread idea that all Libertarians and Tea Partiers simply hate blacks and therefore their entire platform is null and void). Because of this, foolish legislation was able to work it's way through the Congress and end up on the President's desk.
This is, of course, not to say that this did not happen before the advent of the Progressive (read: Socialist) backed Seventeenth Amendment. It most certainly did. However, the members of the state legislature, who are on the whole more knowledgeable on political issues than most citizens, are better qualifed to elect Senators than the people, as Senators are in Washington to work for said legislature - not necessarily the people of said state. The Senators, one could say, work for their state, while the Congressmen work for their constituents. This is quite fair - the states have representation in Washington through the Senate, and the people through the House. Giving both houses of Congress to the people takes away the rights of the states, and therefore, enlarges the power of the federal government. While it gives the illusion of giving more power to the people, is that really what's going on? Are the supporters of direct election really concerned with the rights of the people, or rather are they working for a more powerful centralized federal government? I would most certainly say the second; almost all of the Progressive programs had a humanitarian or libertarian veneer that betrayed the true nature of said programs.
All of us, left, right, and center, would like to do away with the corruption in Washington and the hegemonic qualities of our powerful federal government. However, while voting the right men into office is certainly an important part of the Washington "clean-up", it is not the end. We must go beyond just voting and must return to the system our Founders wisely created for us - a system with a bicameral legislature containing two houses, one elected by the people, the other, by the state legislatures; a system that perfectly gives both states and the people representation in the federal capitol, Washington. What we have now is a monster - a bicameral legislature in which both houses are elected by the people; how are the states represented in the federal government through this system? They most certainly are not - not to the extent that they were when they had some control over their representation. Is it any wonder that our country is going downhill - and fast? Let's return to the Founding Fathers' vision for America, not the plan of the anti-American radical Progressives of the 1910s and '20s, who pursued and supported, among other bizarre programs, euthanasia, forced sterilization of certain subsets of the population, and racially-motivated abortion policies AKA genocide through a steady decline in birth rates.
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Posted By: Mike Blevins
Date: September 29, 2010 09:36:38 PM
Mr. Massa, I agree with your main point here. Great damage was done to our constitutional system by changing the way senators are elected. This needs to be remedied post haste. Getting the fickle, ill-informed American voter out of the mix wherever possible is definitely worthwhile.
There is a tendency to blame Washington--and there's certainly plenty of blame to go around there. But the voters consistently lose sight of one glaring and inescapable fact: they sent the charlatans to Washington in the first place! Over and over again. As long as Senator or Congressperson So and So kept the (borrowed) federal dollars flowing to the home district, he or she could count on decades of support from the voters back home.
I'm not optimistic that any true reform can happen so long as the American voter remains complicit in bringing down the constitutional system. What we need are better voters. America needs to turn off Dancing with the Stars and turn on Freedom Watch and Stossel.
Posted By: Dale Husband
Date: October 3, 2010 02:22:37 AM
This whole article made me laugh. You really think states lost power when Senators were directly elected by the people of those same states? Gee, to be consistent, why not just abolish the House of Representatives and have the Senate elected by the state legislatures? Then the states will have even more power. But the people will have NONE!
And stop the rancid scaremongering! Statements like "the advent of the Progressive (read: Socialist) backed Seventeenth Amendment" and "anti-American radical Progressives of the 1910s and '20s, who pursued and supported, among other bizarre programs, euthanasia, forced sterilization of certain subsets of the population, and racially-motivated abortion policies AKA genocide through a steady decline in birth rates" only make you look like a conspiracy nut. I've had enough of that bull and it's time you Libertarian dogmatists got real, for once!
One more thing: The Founding Fathers were NOT infallible prophets of God! Don't you dare try to make a religion out of everything they did!
This whole article made me laugh. You really think states lost power when Senators were directly elected by the people of those same states? Gee, to be consistent, why not just abolish the House of Representatives and have the Senate elected by the state legislatures? Then the states will have even more power. But the people will have NONE!
No one suggested abolishing the democratic part of our democratic republic.
Keep in mind, though: A Congress that worries about re-election WILL carry out the will of "The People." Problem is, it's rarely constitutional.
Do YOU support a democracy, or a Democratic Republic? Pure democracy would never protect liberties, and direct election of senators by The People is a major reason we're at this point in our country.
