Posted on 02/26/2013 7:20:37 AM PST by FatMax
Bad, bad, bad.
Both elected by the people does not.
sfl
This has about as much chance of happening as Karl Rove becoming an FR moderator.
‘Cause we know that the legislators of our states won’t suck more pork from Uncle Samantha than the rest of us would (bad as the rest of us are). [Little irony and sarcasm there.]
If the 17th were repealed, we would be taxed more than we earned and shot for trying to do so much as building a storage shed. We would be even more subject to the tyranny of a few favored constituents controlling politicians from the shadows.
More clearly, it’s a desire to give local/state politicians even more control over the flow of federal pork to further “empower” themselves to watch, control and rob us. Most such folks in our country lean extremely to the left on getting federal money to their accounts and preventing others from having traditional families (federally funded social programs) and producing truly useful items in small shops (federally instigated and funded local regulations demanding fees/bribes, government-linked NGOs, government-dependent services, etc.).
When states appointed Senators, whom to appoint was an issue in every state assemblymans campaign. Not atypical were the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, in which the candidates hoped to convince listeners to elect supportive State legislators. Voters were necessarily more circumspect of the candidate Assemblymans opinions and positions on the spectrum of state and federal issues. By this, State appointments encouraged a higher level of competence and judgment in state legislators. They would, for instance, have to have an opinion on treaties in work by the President and SecState. Imagine asking your state rep for his or her opinion on the Law of the Sea Treaty, or Agenda 21 floating through the UN, or if they would support a preemptive attack on Iran.
Todays State Assemblymen rightly receive far less respect than their pre-17th ancestors because less is asked of them.
Would State legislators really turn a blind eye toward certain federal court nominees? It wasnt long after the 17th, that FDRs judges, for all practical purposes, did away with the 10th Amendment. Would radical Leftists like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lead attorney for the ACLU, have sailed through Senate confirmation? Probably every democrat judicial nominee since at least the days of Jimmy Carter was hostile to the 9th and 10th Amendments. For no other reason, would the States have just rolled over and accepted these hostile jurists?
Ping to #28.
Who cast votes in 1858 ?
I don’t know the answer to your question. To every state with rational, patriotic, informed Americans like Georgia, there are states like New Jersey and Massachusetts and Maryland and New York and California and Illinois who have large urban populations of uniformed, uneducated, mindless government subsidized drones.
Would the balance of Senators overall be any diffferent than the balance today? I don’t know.
Also, I was under the impression that back then, most politicians were like Cincinnatus. Their political careers were brief interludes to a relatively normal like, unlike the plethora of long term, “professional” politicians who plague us today.
I just can’t tell which system today would be better.
We'll never know for sure the ramifications of the 17th, but if Senators had not been beholding to the whims of the people just as Congressmen are, had not been charged with spreading the wealth these past 100 years, I think it is fair to say our nation would be far different. The mindless urbanites would probably be fewer in number, for there would have been less money for democrats to breed them for the past several generations.
Under the federal system, there was feedback between the States and Senators. With the 17th, the feedback moved to between the mob and Senators. I just don't think the FDR, LBJ, Obama programs of spreading the plunder would have had a chance without the 17th.
Nor would anything which stripped state sovereignty. One could argue that the entire Twentieth Century would have turned out much differently regarding domestic policy and the effect it had on economics.
Only the repeal of the 19th can save America, and that won’t happen.
To FatMax, I agree.
As Senators got used to independence from the States and could ignore the effect of their legislation upon them, Scotus lent a helping hand in 1941 when its FDR appointed judges termed the 10th Amendment to be tautologous, a needless repetition of the obvious.
The Progressive Scotus decision was an insult to the Framers, delegates to the State ratifying conventions and the first Constitutional Congress that sent what became the 10th Amendment to the States for ratification.
This meant that federalism was a political question to be handled by a political process devoid of federalism!
Absent federalism, the states rapidly watched wholesale elimination of their legitimate and historic control over internal commerce, general police powers and had to accept conditional spending by the national government.
Congress discovered it could use the states to achieve its progressive ends without being held accountable for the results.
Very interesting, just not sure what I think about this.
Agreed. IMHO, it appears to be the most viable answer to save at least a portion of Our Republic.
Good point. They both came from the same deranged progressive mindset
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