What FDR and his ilk were democrats in the sense of ‘majority rule’. Stir up mob thinking on an issue get a vote Bang! a new law! Your ‘majority’ just ruled! The Founding Fathers were very suspicious of that type of political system. They knew ‘mass emotion’ was capable of overcoming any amount of ‘mass education’. They designed a system where political power was divided between ‘the mob - people’ directly and ‘the people’ corporately - the state. Almost every Constitutional Amendment since 1912 has been to upset that balance and tilt power toward mob-ocracy. The argument for doing that has always been education will make people wise and immune to demagogic appeal. You see Progressives like Wilson were far far smarter than the Founding Fathers or so they told themselves and anyone who would listen! See any evidence of that in the last 100 years that they were? Any immunity mass education has given to keep from being stampeded into a voting mob has been negated by mass advertising and made more effective by the Internet. I cringe when I see people here use the words ‘our democracy’!
Repeal the 17th Amendment!
State legislatures couldn’t do worse!
> Repeal the 17th Amendment! <
Totally agree. As you noted, the Founders set up the way senators were chosen as a check against mob rule. Unfortunately, that horse has left the barn. And he’s not coming back.
A hundred years from now an honest historian will identify the 17th Amendment as a top reason for the fall of the United States.
And repeal the 16th and 19th, while we’re at it.