WHEN & HOW
A Brief History
As a reminder, there were 11 years between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. From 1777 until the Constitution was ratified, “The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” was the controlling document. It was a failure, chaos prevailed. Collapse of the Union into 13 separate nations was imminent unless changes were made.
The “Constitutional Convention” of 1787 was not called to form a new government. The delegates were charged with modifying the Articles to provide a stable, sensible government. Confronted with impossibility, they set themselves to the task of “Throw out the old,” “Bring in the new,” and we got the Constitution.
Drafting the Constitution
Matching the written records with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights we see where the Founding Fathers meticulously avoided three types of government – Monarchy, Theocracy and Democracy.
Monarchy was handled by providing for an elected President with a limited term. But that “election” would be done by the State Legislatures who would appoint electors who, in turn, elect the President. The path to conversion from a Representative Republic to Democracy started in the 1820s as the States turned that process over to General Election.
Theocracy, overlooked in the Constitution itself, was handled by the First Amendment.
That left Democracy, which they specifically rejected.
C. H. Hoebeke, summed it up quite nicely, "Having in the short span of eleven years experienced the violent swing of the political pendulum from abusive monarchy to abusive majoritarianism, and in the process discovered that life, liberty, and property were no more secure under the latter than they had been under the former, the Constitution's framers saw the will of the people as a force to be restrained and refined, not unleashed and encouraged." [From HUMANITAS, Volume IX, No. 2, 1996 © National Humanities Institute, Washington, DC USA]
Edmund Randolph, speaking to all of the delegates, behind closed doors, said “The purpose of our assembling here is to check the turbulence and follies of democracy.” As reported by James Madison, there were heads nodding in agreement rather than dissent or objection.
The only concession to Democracy was the directly elected House of Representatives. It would be the people’s house where the ever shifting winds of popular causes could blow willy-nilly through its chambers.
The Senate, appointed by the State Legislatures would be a body of Statesmen, calm, deliberative, immune to popular causes. They would be the damper on the passions of the moment emerging from the House of Representatives. Vigilant guardians of individual rights, the States and the people’s defense against a federal government overreaching its Constitutional limits.
In 1834, as the States were shifting towards democracy by turning selection of Presidential Electors over to general election, Alexis de Tocqueville noted the Senate’s "eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose arguments would do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe." He went on to conclude "American republics will be obliged more frequently to introduce the plan of election by an elected body into their system of representation, or run the risk of perishing miserably on the shoals of democracy." (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. and ed. Henry Reeve (New York: Vintage, 1945), vol. 1, 211-212.)
It worked well for more than a hundred years. Late in the 19th Century, the Power Brokers saw the federal government as a cow to be milked for power, prestige and cash, but the Senators, who took their marching orders from their respective Legislatures kept blocking them. After a number of years of manipulation, rampant bribery and really dirty politics, we got the 17th Amendment which took the power of appointment away from the State Legislatures and moved it over to general election.
The Consequences
The result of the 17th Amendment was inevitable. When the Senators were dependent on the Legislatures for reelection, the individual legislators and the Legislature as a whole had enormous clout. When your reelection depends on only 80, 90, 100 people, you pay very close attention to what they want and, more importantly, what they don’t want.
When election was shifted to the entire population of the State, the electing units were so large no one at home had any clout. This is exactly what the manipulators wanted, because the Senator's loyalties switched to those who could help assure reelection – the political parties, campaign contributors and the Washington, DC power structure in general. And that's where they still are today. With few exceptions, the Senators’ first loyalty, almost subservient obedience, is to a political party rather than the people who voted for them.
We were supposed to have a Senate made up of Statesmen who would be immune to popular causes, vigilant guardians of our individual rights and liberty. Instead, we have a Senate composed of 100 free agents, free to follow their own agenda, which they do with impunity and immunity; answerable only to their political party, special interests, the mainstream media and their campaign contributors; responding with legislation to every popular cause that comes along, often inventing one just to get face time on TV; perfectly willing to play dangerous political games with the lives of our men with boots on the ground; eradicate everyone's rights simply because a few might or have abused them and have turned the United States Senate into an arena for an ongoing, seemingly never ending, high stakes game of political “Gotcha.” It's disgusting and we deserve better.
All of this and more, which you will see, can be dropped right on the doorstep of the 17th Amendment.
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We have separated this into several short segments. Links at the end of each one will take you to the next one. We have done this for your convenience. Often, people want to go back to a certain point. This makes it easy for you to find what you are looking for. The links to each segment are at the bottom of the menu bar to the left.
What we have seen so far is the cause, now it’s time to examine the effect. Next stop is Hotlining. See how the Senate really conducts your business. It’s a short op/ed validated by clips from two Senators’ websites. If it doesn’t make you angry enough to kick a hole in the wall, nothing will.