“You have a problem with the direct election of US Senators by their constituents???”
Don’t you???
You mean you did not know that the seventeenth amendment was a plank in the platform of the Progressive Movement to undermine and nuetralize the constitutional impediment to unlimited Federal Government power? And that it has been wildly successful? And that far from preventing the rich elites from getting control of the Senate, it has enabled them to?
The Progressives’ purpose in passing the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for direct election by popular vote of senators, was for the individual states’ elected representative governments to give up any representation they had in the federal government.
This led to the gradual slide into near irrelevance of state legislatures, and state governments became mere administrative units of the Federal Government. The popular-vote election of senators guaranteed an overextension of federal power and the rise of special interest groups to fill the power vacuum previously occupied by state legislatures.
Now we, out here in flyover country, have to put up with the infernal meddling of federal government lawyers to a degree that would have been unthinkable to the founders and writers and ratifiers of the constitution.
What you have written here is true. A leftist would spin it differently and understate what this ammendment actually has accomplished.
When my homeschooled children and I were covering this area of history, the textbook DID emphasize that it was not necessarily a good ammendment in the long run.
Well stated. Today, very few catch on to the genius of having state legislatures select US Senators. The framers used human nature (greed and a desire for power) as a source to provide a check on the growth of federal government. The concept was that greedy state legislatures would not select Senators that would allow the federal government to grow and take over areas that would otherwise be handled by the state legislatures (thus keeping the tax base and financial power in-state).
No, I don't have a problem with direct election of United States Senators. Any attempt to repeal the 17th Amendment and give even more control over the Senate to the usual gang of corrupt plutocrats makes birtherism (or even paleo-"conservatism" look like a practical political program. Let's bear in mind here that YOU are the enthusiast for the election of Mr. Nearly $200 million to the US Senate. If there were no 17th Amendment, Lieutenant Governor Plutocrat would be Senator Plutocrat by simply dishing out enough in the way of bribes (which would be the new standard in "Campaigns"). State legislators, adequately greased, would be doing back-over flips.
Progressivism is NOT a four-letter word. Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive of the right sort and Woodrow Wilson was a Progressive of the wrong sort. I have no problem with government maintaining truly sanitary water systems rather than having to combat periodic cholera epidemics. I have seen the result of impure water and cholera in the 18-50s era gravestones in the town cemetery in the town where I now live. We ain't going back.
OTOH, many Progressives thought that Eugenics was a really nifty idea as did Margaret Higgins Sanger, founding kiler at Planned Barrenhood (originally American Birth Control League). She wanted to eliminate what she called (to the delight of the elites of her time) human weeds. Read her pal Lothrop Stoddard's enthusiastic eugenics books. Or Madison Grant's work.
William Jennings Bryan had much to recommend him but was hardly infallible. Anything named LaFollette can be safely dismissed to this day. Progressives, like Republicans, are a mixed bag. Democrats used to be a mixed bag until McGovern and the communists seized permanent control in 1972. Al Smith was a great man. He drove Workman's Compensation (a Progressive idea) through the New York Legislature before WW I after the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire. My mom was for many years a seamstress and we were quite appreciative of Al Smith's work in the state next door.
I really don't give a crap that the state governments were denied representation of their legislators' choice in the Senate. Governments ought not to have a right to representation. The Founders were not infallible. Neither are the voters but it is the voters who fight the wars and pay the taxes. If that offends the plutocrats, tooooo bad!
Sorry but I really don't lament the passing of the ability of state legislators to receive massive bribes twice in every six years. The notion that popular election of senators somehow enables rich elites to control the Senate is what the logicians call the error of post hoc, propter hoc. Use Occam's Razor and the recent despicable primary campaign of Robamney funded by people who make Robamney's assets look like those of a lawn jockey to find the simple answer: rich elitists buy what they want, regardless of price. It is a lot harder for them to bribe millions of voters. In a popular primary or election, they are limited to carpetbombing the airwaves with lies to keep from the peasants what Percival Gotbucks Pecksniff XXIII wants for himself (as a sort of birthright). It is the sort of thing that leads his old chums down at the ye ancient polo club or at Skull and Bones reunions or whatever to accept that Percival has that "common touch" to fleece the suckers.