Posted on 03/10/2009 5:57:13 AM PDT by Shellybenoit
There is a reason that the Senate is called the "deliberative" body. The the framers of the constitution created it that way. They understood politics very well, that at times the public would make decisions based on a temporary passion, the Senate's job is to slow things things down, before irreparable damage was made. Federalist 63 written by James Madison (or Alexander Hamilton) says:
“There are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?”
Our founders invented the US Senate to fight against people like President Obama. More below:
(Excerpt) Read more at yidwithlid.blogspot.com ...
Also i would like to point out that the dynamic of our government and the framers original intent for our country changed with one single event...
The power to vote in US senators was originall in the hands of each states legislative branch... This all changed with the 17’th amednment alloweing the hords the ability to to vote in there senator’s.
This very action IMO is the most underated event in our nations history.... The country from that point on would never be the same and the people where given the ability to vote themselves a new car house etc with tax payer funds
Madison would NOT have been alone in that fight. One can add a myriad of other, equally recognizable names as well.
I agree totally. As an aside, the framers of our constitution never cease to amaze me. The intelligence, common sense, and fortitude under great strain they displayed was staggering.
The reason that Madison viewed the Senate as a regulator on legislation to slow down the process is that he wrote the Constitution to have the Senate comprised of delegates elected by the States. We destroyed this precious concept when the USA adopted the 17th amendment in 1913. Now, we have just a mirror of the House, with longer terms to encourage corruption and tyranny by the majority.
Madison, in a speech before the Virginia Ratifying Committee, said, “Circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”
True. But todays senate is an absolute mockery of what the Founding Fathers had in mind and we all know it. It is a pork manufacturing machine, and a body where the members of the president's party follow him blindly while the members of the opposition obstruct for the sake of obstruction.
Underated, Indeed.
When the Dems were in the minority, and they semi-filibustered against President Bush’s judicial nominees, I railed against the Senate. However, the change from Senators being elected by state legislatures to a popular vote is what brought us to this impasse. Now the Republicans in the Senate (and I don’t even include Specter, Collins, and Snowe in that description) are the only legislative check on the Democrats.
Giving women the right to vote came about at around the same time also helped change the electorate in a way that has increased the tendency towards socialism. No offense to the ladies here, who are all equally capable of voting as their husbands, but the government was fundamentally changed from adding women to the mix. What the prior system did was make the family the basic voting unit, represented by the head of the household. I don't think it's wrong to suggest that women as a whole vote differently than men as a whole, and that we get a different type of nation if one or the other is in the mix. We used to be patriarchal. We have never been matriarchal, but ever since the 21st Amendment, we have been moving to a more feminized society. You can debate whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is definitely a reason why we have an Obama as President and a welfare state.
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