Free Republic

In continuance of the Senate of the States series, the next three squibs leave the Federal Convention and visit the decades leading to the destructive 17th Amendment (17A). The 17A triggered a cascade of stunning downwind consequences, perhaps only second in effect to the immediate post-Civil War amendments. As opposed to the 13th – 15th Amendments which reset society, the 17A reset our republican governing form. Overnight, the 17A transformed the Framers’ exquisite compound democratic/federal structure into a democratic form deadly to republics.1 Why the 17th Amendment? What enormous forces convinced the people, states, and congress to trade a proven,...

WASHINGTON – The dramatic revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have acted as a catalyst for a broader Arab awakening that has fundamentally shaken the Middle East’s political order, which has been in place since the late 1970’s. While it is too early to predict the final outcomes, several important regional implications are already beginning to emerge. First, the revolts are a double-edged sword for Iran. The Iranian regime may benefit from the ouster or weakening of pro-Western Arab leaders and regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, but Iran’s initial encouragement of the democratic uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt...

Pär Kjellin, the CEO of leading Swedish travel package operator Apollo, has argued that travel and tourism to countries with authoritarian regimes helps to undermine them. Kjellin argued on Thursday that tourism can be a "good and democratic force," making a link between the high volumes of tourists to countries such as Egypt and Tunisia and the ongoing pro-democracy movements. "The fact that people travel and meet across cultural, religious and political boundaries is a good thing. Visits, even to dictatorships, I believe helps to destroy them. I would argue that tourism, major global travel, is in itself a positive...

Another part of Bush's speech dealt with the supposed spread of "democracy" in the Muslim world: "He [Bush] also offered plenty of praise for democratic advances, naming countries like Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan. 'The light of liberty is beginning to shine,' he said." Is he crazy? In Turkey, the so-called "light of liberty" is undoing Kemalism, putting the secularists in the universities, the judiciary, and the army, under great pressure, and bringing Islam back, step by grim step, as Erdogan and now Gul, cleverly backed by all kinds of people, including the shadowy millionaire Fethullah Gulen, probe and...

Abstract: "The Irony of Populism: The Republican Shift and the Inevitability of American Aristocracy" analyzes the shift in the role of the Supreme Court following the movement towards a democratic Senate which culminated in the Seventeenth Amendment. The Supreme Court's shift is presented as the inevitable result of the system of mixed government that underlies the constitutional order, which orders American Government into democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical parts. While in the original conception of the constitution the Senate was the aristocratic part, the Senate would become part of the democratic part with the Seventeenth Amendment and prior procedural changes. Into...

From The Center for Constitutional Studies Democratizing the Constitution: The Failure of the Seventeenth AmendmentC. H. Hoebeke*[From HUMANITAS, Volume IX, No. 2, 1996 © National Humanities Institute, Washington, DC USA] It was with no small sense of vindication that Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan signed the proclamation of 31 May 1913, declaring the Seventeenth Amendment duly ratified and incorporated into the fundamental laws of the United States. More than twenty years earlier as a Nebraska congressman, "The Great Commoner" had joined the struggle to free the Senate from the control of corrupt state legislatures, and despite three failed campaigns for...

The New Republic's Noam Scheiber argues that the Republican Party is less likely to benefit from the wave of "democratization" going on in the Middle East than the Democratic Party: "[I]n the long-term, I think Bush's democratization initiatives clearly benefit Democrats, assuming they don't find a way to screw it up. Here's why: The Republican base consists primarily of Southern and lower-midwestern isolationist/realist types, Western libertarians, conservative evangelicals, and K-Street taxcutters. (As far as I can tell, no one ever lost a Republican primary by failing to win the neocon vote.) None of these groups gets particularly excited about democratizing...

Reading the Arab Press: A Victory for Democracy in Lebanon, Middle East News Analysis, Mohamad Ozeir,Pacific News Service, Mar 01, 2005Editor's Note: In the wake of popular protests that brought down the government of Lebanon, some Middle Eastern media are excitedly predicting the arrival of democracy region-wide. SAN FRANCISCO--The sudden resignation of the Syrian-backed Lebanese government on Feb. 28 represented a sea change in the ongoing debate about democracy in the Arab World. What made this resignation a major front-page story in the Arab press was not Prime Minister Omar Karami's dramatic announcement in front of parliament that his...

In a petition to the Iraqi electoral commission, an array of Sunni and Kurdish political parties and individuals on November 26 called for a six-month delay in Iraq's national elections for two reasons: "To address the current security situation and to complete the necessary administrative, technical, and systematic arrangements."The interim Iraqi government, with American support, quickly rejected this appeal and a spokesman for the Shiites insisted that the planned date of January 30, 2005, is "non-negotiable." But there are good reasons to postpone the vote until Iraq is truly ready for it, even if that is months or years away.While...

Nearly four years have elapsed since the Oslo process (1993-2000) between Israelis and Palestinians foundered in bloodshed. Over that period, two U.S. administrations have tried to forge policies that would reduce the violence and point toward a solution to the conflict.It has not been a single-minded pursuit. Since September 11, 2001, the prime focus of Washington has been the management of unprecedented U.S. military interventions in the region, which removed regimes from power in Afghanistan and Iraq. The notion of Israeli-Palestinian peace as the key to regional stability has been replaced by the war on terror and the insistence on...

HOW TO HELP IRAQ New York Post July 9, 2004 -- 'WE will do all that we can to help Iraq," says Ger man Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who had been in the forefront of the campaign to keep Saddam Hussein in power before liberation. "The international community must come together and help Iraq," echoes France's new Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, signaling a possible change of course in Paris. Other opponents of the liberation of Iraq have expressed similar sentiments. "Helping Iraq" was a key pledge in a communiqué issued by Iran and Syria at the end of Syrian President...

Anyone who has listened to President Bush's recent speeches about the need to promote democracy in the Arab-Muslim world can't but walk away both impressed and dubious — impressed because promoting democracy in the Arab world is something no president before has advocated with Mr. Bush's vigor, and dubious because this sort of nation-building is precisely what Mr. Bush spurned throughout his campaign. Where did Mr. Bush's passion for making the Arab world safe for democracy come from? Though the president mentioned this theme before the war, it was not something he stressed with the public, Congress or the U.N....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Repudiating decades of U.S. policy, President Bush said Thursday the United States and its allies have been wrong in "excusing and accommodating" a lack of freedom in the Middle East. He prodded Saudi Arabia and Egypt to lead Arab nations toward democracy. Mindful of widespread anger and mistrust in the Muslim world toward the United States, Bush also said that as democratic governments emerge in the Middle East, they should reflect their own cultures and "will not and should not look like us." He said it would take time for democracy to spread and the United States...

If you listen closely to the emerging debate about Iraq, one of the themes you can start to hear is that culture matters — and therefore this whole Iraq adventure may be a fool's errand. Because the political culture in the Arab world — where family and tribal identities have always trumped the notion of the citizen — is resistant to democracy. I believe culture does matter, although I have no idea how much it explains the absence of Arab democracies. But I also believe cultures can change under the weight of history, economic reform and technological progress, and my...

Halliburton an irritant in plan for Iraq Perhaps President Bush has perfectly good reasons for allowing American companies with White House connections to get secret contracts for rebuilding Iraq. Perhaps the president has considered the ramifications of giving billions in business to companies such as Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO. Nevertheless, the president should reconsider the process for awarding bids for the reconstruction. It's bad enough that the insider deal-making feeds the conspiracy theories of loonies such as former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney -- who infamously suggested that Bush allowed the terrorist atrocities of Sept. 11 so...

Unconditional Surrender to the Volonté Générale Tage Lindbom The Myth of Democracy | 1991 (from parts XI and XII) Nowhere is man so insignificant as in a democracy. …. But does not modern man have a great compensation in citizenship? Is not citizenship the great human assumption of responsibility and social morality? Actually, the father of universal citizenship, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, has abolished the foundations of this citizenship because he proclaims the unidimensionality of popular sovereignty. For Rousseau, the highest norm is not law; the highest norm is the will of man, above which nothing can be admitted. But genuine...

The American administration will present its plan for a "New Middle East," focusing on democratization and economic development in the Arab world, in a speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell on November 6, according to Israeli government sources who were briefed on the speech. However, the sources said, Powell will refrain from directly criticizing existing Arab regimes and will not call for their replacement with democratic rule. Instead, he will speak of the need to make existing institutions more democratic by promoting women's rights, increasing freedom of the press, expanding economic and educational opportunities and making government more transparent....