Posted on 09/14/2012 4:51:00 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
From #28 I posited the combined harm done by the 17th and the trend toward democratization of electing the Prez. Popular will and the fourth branch are killing our republic.
I don’t disagree.
However, implicit in the claim that popular will is to blame is the assumption that some other source of will will provide better results.
I have some experience dealing with a state legislature, specifically Florida’s, and I can state categorically and with utmost confidence that giving them more power, or returning it to them, is not the answer.
Very few Americans are aware than in the original Constitution, only the House provided direct representation of the people. Which is why they called it what they did. Now all three elected branches of the federal government do so.
For historic proof that too much democracy harmed the States and our young nation, and why only one house in Congress was to rely on popular will, check out Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, 1969.
I am perfectly clear on the intent of the Founders in this regard.
However, the EC functioned as intended only three times, and the third time was such a disaster that the Constitution was promptly amended.
I am just not sure that returning increased power to those paragons of virtue the state legislature will make things any better.
The first source of the problems for the newly independent states was that their legislatures, which generally had two houses, were derived from the same source, the people. Both houses therefore sought the favor of the people and it lead to demagogic legislators and awful laws and unstable government. Sound familiar?
By the mid 1780s this problem was recognized and was in the process of being corrected in most states. The mistakes of 1776-1777 regarding state Senatorial elections by popular votes would not be repeated at the federal Convention of 1787. The people would elect members to one house only, not because of ideology, but because it was demonstrably deficient to allow the people to elect members to both houses of the legislatures. Members of the federal Senate had to come from a source filtered from the people.
It had nothing to with your “paragons of virtue.”
With the 17th we ignored our own history and went whole hog back to a method of Senatorial election that had been shown to be dangerous to our liberties.
What do you find so clear? What was their intent?
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