I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government. The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous. The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.
The progressives envision a national government that they can dominate and that, in turn, will dominate us. There is no activity over which they do not feel they can or should control. Private property is a panacea, to keep the masses from open revolt, but they really believe that all wealth that is generated belongs to the government except for the portion they permit us to keep. If you think that statement is unimaginable consider this. How often do you hear, concerning the current debate over the Bush tax cuts, that we cannot afford them for the rich? Think about it. They say our government cannot afford to allow certain citizens of this country to continue to pay the same level of taxes in 2011 that they pay today. That the government somehow has to pay for a tax cut, that actually isn’t even a cut but rather a continuation of what has existed for the last ten years. How is getting less than you want a cost? If you awake on Christmas morning and do not find the present you have been hoping for under the tree, do you say, “Man, that’s gonna cost me?” Of course you do not.
A Massive Federal Government
Think about the many federal departments and agencies that exist today for which you will find no authorization in the Constitution: Education; Agriculture; Housing and Urban Development; Energy; Health and Human Services; Transportation. Did they not have education in the eighteenth century? Are we more agrarian today than we were in 1789? If not, why do we need a Department of Agriculture today, but the Founders didn’t see a need for it then?
The progressives are fighting for the continual concentration of functions at the federal level where the voices of the people are faint, but the voices of the special interests are robust and clear. The branch of the federal government that is closest to the people is the House of Representatives. But ponder how small your voice is in that chamber. You are one of some 700,000 in your congressional district; your congressman or woman is one of 435 in the House of Representatives. How do you get your voice heard at the federal level? And yet Congress will tell you what kind of light bulb to buy or what kind of toilet you must flush. Is this what our founding fathers envisioned?
The Bloody Revolution
To establish our country they fought a brutal revolution; a revolution where 50% of the mortal wounds were caused by bayonets. Now that’s up close and personal. It is not something they entered into lightly and a reading of the Declaration of Independence will tell you that they pledged their lives when they signed that document and their death warrants as well. If captured by the British they surely would have been tried and executed for treason.
In designing our form of government they were very suspicious of strong central power and authority, having just thrown off one. They did not trust government. As Jefferson said, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” Here is a simple test, do you fear the IRS or does the IRS fear you?
The Founders designed the Constitution to have strictly enumerated powers given to the federal government with all other powers retained by the states or the people. They did not design a democracy, but a republic. In that republic they built numerous checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of power. It has been the goal of the progressives to remove those checks and balances and put in place the tyranny that fears no people.
The Structure of the Federal Government
Among the balances they put in place was that the people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives. That is the body of government closest to the people. If you recall the wording of the Tenth Amendment it speaks of the federal government, the states and the people. The Senate was to be appointed by the state legislatures to represent their interests. The president was to be elected, not by the people, but by the Electoral College. Lastly, judges were to be appointed for life by the president with the advice and consent of the senate. Why did they do this? One reason is that they believed that if a proposed law had the backing of the majority of the people (House of Representatives) and a majority of the states (Senate) then it was probably a good thing, otherwise slow it down. The fewer the number of laws, the greater our liberty.
The Progressives Attack
The progressives began their designs on the Constitution with the introduction of the income tax through the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. By allowing the government to tax incomes the government could now afford to greatly expand. However, to be able to expand it had to have the consent of the states, which was not likely to be granted. So two months after the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified. The Seventeenth Amendment called for the direct election of Senators, rather than having them appointed by the state legislatures. The individual citizens picked up two more votes in the federal government, in most cases an even weaker voice than their Representative, and the states were shut out.
Do you think things such as unfunded mandates could pass in Congress if the states still chose the members of the Senate? Social Security? Medicare? The Department of Education? The Department of Housing and Urban Development? And on and on? Think of some of the more radical members of the Senate. Do you think Al Franken would have been appointed by the Minnesota state legislature? For many years in New York, the State Assembly was under the control of the Democrats but the State Senate was under the control of the Republicans. The governorship passed back and forth between representatives of the two parties. However, New York’s two Senators are Democrats and win reelection easily because of the concentration of Democrats mainly in New York City. Could Hillary Clinton have moved into New York and immediately become its newest Senator with a Republican governor and Republican controlled State Senate? She was elected Senator from New York before she even moved out of the White House. So instead of representing their state legislatures, Senate candidates focused on the population centers of their states to appeal directly to the people and to get elected and reelected. The states were reduced from sovereign entities to subsidiaries of the federal government.
The Supreme Court
When Franklin Roosevelt was president he tried to pass his massive socialist programs but found that the Supreme Court was striking down many of his programs as being unconstitutional. Roosevelt wanted to pack the court by increasing its membership from nine justices to fifteen. He argued that the justices were old and over worked. So he wanted to appoint a new justice for every existing justice that was seventy years or older. His plan failed. But when he broke with George Washington’s precedent and that of every president who followed him of serving no more than two terms, he was eventually able to appoint every justice to the Supreme Court. So he got his way, it just took longer.
The Supreme Court can be considered the collateral damage of the Seventeenth Amendment. The Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. However once the Senators became directly elected by the people things changed. Would a distinguished jurist like Robert Bork be treated as shamefully as he was by the lie filled speech of Ted Kennedy if Kennedy and Joe Biden weren’t doing the work of the pro-abortion lobby? Would Clarence Thomas be subjected to the electronic lynching he faced if not for some Senators pandering to their special interest groups? What we now have are potential Supreme Court justices who have learned that if you don’t want to get “Borked” keep your mouth shut during your confirmation hearings. So we don’t know who we are going to get until a lifetime appointee is on the bench and then it is too late.
The 2000 Presidential Election
Who can forget the 2000 presidential election? The Democrats still say Al Gore won, not because of Florida (he lost the election there, he lost the re-count, he lost the re-re-count) but because he won the popular vote. The debates raged, why do we have an Electoral College? The president should be elected by popular vote only.
The argument follows the one made previously about the direct election of senators. The Electoral College forces presidential candidates to campaign everywhere because everywhere counts. There are at least three electoral votes to be had in every state. The Founders were very concerned about balance. They did not want the president just to be elected by the people of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, the large cities of that time. Today, if the Electoral College was abolished the election would focus on the media and population centers of New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and the large cities because that’s where it is easiest to get the message out and that is where the majority of the people are. The progressives would put up pretty much the same candidates as they do today, perhaps more to the left. This is their home turf and power base. Instead of traveling around the country they could concentrate their time and money in a few large cities. The Republicans would probably field candidates of a far more moderate stripe to not get hooted off the stage in New York. Let me illustrate.
Electoral College vote Bush-Gore 2000
The Democrats claim Gore won in 2000 because he won the popular vote. He lost in the Electoral College by five votes. If you look at the breakdown of the states Gore won versus Bush, Gore took the Northeast, the Great Lakes area and the West Coast. With the exception of New Mexico, Bush took everything else.
Let’s dial it down a level and look at who won at the county level.
Bush-Gore 2000 Winners by County
If you look at it at the county level, you could drive from the east coast to the west coast without entering a single county that Gore won. You could do the same driving from Canada to Mexico. But if popular vote was the metric, the man who won 80%-90% of the land mass of the United States would have lost. Why should you not have a say, if you don’t live in a major population center? It is not like Bush won in an Electoral College landslide and it is not like Gore absolutely trounced Bush in the popular vote. The purpose of the Electoral College is to act as another brake on the tyranny of the majority.
Where Do We Go From Here
We are presently at a crossroads. We have an electorate that is more knowledgeable, more aware, and more engaged than at any time in my memory. We can continue to go down the socialist path toward a massive central government that takes all of our liberties for a measure of sustenance, or we can turn the tide and demand our liberties back.
Let us begin by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
