[M Kehoe]

Ping.

5.56mm

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Bump for later read. In those very few discussions I allow myself to be drawn into involving liberals, it is inevitable that the lazy, sloppy use of the word “democracy” as a descriptor for our government must inevitably be corrected. It’s getting annoying, frankly, how few people comprehend the difference between our Republic and a democracy.

[x]

This is part of The Atlantic's alarmist "Is Democracy Dying" issue about Trump "building an autocracy."

America already changed massively in Madison's lifetime with the election of Andrew Jackson, and changed again a century later with Wilson and the Roosevelts and LBJ, so Madison's America has been gone a long time.

It's not an awful article, though, and not as Trumpophobic as others the magazine has published.

[BenLurkin]

Voters in several states are experimenting with alternative primary systems that might elect more moderate representatives.

What can "moderate" possibly mean when you have two Democrats running against each other? When both candidates favor a nanny state, differing only in the quantity of oppression they advocate in the name of "progress," there can be no moderation.

[Publius]

Federalist/Anti-Federalist ping.

A thought provoking article, even if it comes from "The Atlantic."

[StoneWall Brigade]

Ping

[mrsmith]

But it misses the main point which is the international funding of our media- of our Public Square.
That was never imagined by the Founders and no structural counter was created.

One example: How can the media fairly treat the subject of imports when they are dependent on the revenue from ads for those imports?

[Jim from C-Town]

Repeal the 17th Amendment. Go back to state legislatures appointing the Senators.

[loveliberty2]

America's Founders, including Madison, never envisioned that, as early as the late 1800's, American citizens would begin to allow a Liberal/Progressive movement to commandeer, direct and control a so-called "public education system" which would systematically remove the ideas of liberty outlined in the Declaration of Independence and framed into the most remarkable document of individual freedom/government limitation ever imagined.

One after another, America's Founders believed that a citizenry who understood the source and nature of their Creator-endowed rights, liberties, and laws to secure them would fiercely protect them for their posterity.

Sadly, by the end of the Centennial Year of their independence, forces who self-identified as "Liberals" (now, "Progressives") began to erode and erase the ideas of liberty and to replace them with counterfeit notions, notions unanchored in the ideas of liberty and law.

Today, we see what that departure from principles has wrought!

[Political Junkie Too]

Madison feared that Congress would be the most dangerous branch of the federal government, sucking power into its “impetuous vortex.” But today he would shudder at the power of the executive branch. The rise of what the presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called the “imperial presidency” has unbalanced the equilibrium among the three branches.

There is no mention of how the 17th amendment contributed to this "unbalance."

If an "imperial presidency" arose, it's because a Senate of the states was converted into a body of mini-presidents. Instead of being secure in their seats as long as they supported the interests of their respective state legislatures, Senators competed alongside Presidents for votes in their individual states. The main difference is that the President has to do this in 50 states, while Senators only have to do it in one state.

Senators who have to compete for campaign funding for votes will think twice about holding a President accountable to he Constitution, because taking such a bold position will lead to counter-attacks during their own campaigns for office. Senators who were appointed by their state legislatures did not have to fear an "imperial president," because they would have their state governments at their back. Today, they only have their parties for support; their state legislatures have been made irrelevant.

-PJ

[Vaquero]

Atlantic? No thanks

[rollo tomasi]

Rosen needs to take some more history classes and read archival enumerations by those he is talking about.

"The first parties played an unexpected cooling function, uniting diverse economic and regional interests through shared constitutional visions."

The Federalists and Democratic-Republicans were divided, yes, but did not share "constitutional visions". Not sharing "constitutional visions" was the biggest reason why they were divided. And guess what, Madison told the Federalists bye-bye, because he began to understand where the Anti-Federalists were coming from and solidified his belief when Judicial review was rammed down the Constitutional throat with Marbury vs. "Himself".

[ckilmer]

actually imho the republic is working exactly as it was designed to work.

If Trump can hold on to the house and senate in november —all these liberals will be singing a different song.

[IronJack]

Oh, look Mommy! Liberals have discovered the Founders! You know, like they occasionally discover the Bible whenever it suits them?

[philman_36]

The Framers designed the American constitutional system not as a direct democracy but as a representative republic, where enlightened delegates of the people would serve the public good.

No, they didn't. It says right there "the American constitutional system". That means a Constitutional Republic, not a representative republic.
A representative republic is the rule of men, not the rule of law.

What the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on our President, and the President of our choice has assented to, & accepted over the friendly strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our country, & it’s laws had pledged hospitality & protection: that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the President, than the solid rights of innocence, the claims of justification, the sacred force of truth, & the forms and substance of law & justice: in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Thomas JeffersonThe preservation of the republic urgently requires imparting constitutional principles to a new generation and reviving Madisonian reason in an impetuous world.
This article is not doing that through promulgating that a representative republic was established instead of a Constitutional Republic.
They've put the cart (representative republic) before the horse (Constitutional Republic).

[Albion Wilde]

bump